
Class jy^ZiL 
BookjQ-S 



RUSSIA, GERMANY, 






AXD 



THE EASTERN QUESTION 



BY 

GUSTAV DIEZEL. 



TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN 



BY 



FREDERICA ROWAN. 



LONDON: 

JAMES RIDGWAY, PICCADILLY. 

1854. 



..Us 



RUSSIAN NATIONALITY, 



History shows that all great States have risen 
on the foundations of a distinct nationality, and 
that their institutions, as well as their development 
and growth, are dependent upon the tendencies and 
qualities which characterize this nationality. Even 
the world-empires which have been founded at va- 
rious periods, or to found which attempts have been 
made, have exhibited little else than the sway of 
one nationality over other nations, their history 
being* the history of the attempts of the dominant 
nationality to assimilate the various subjugated na- 
tions to itself 5 and such empires have become more 
rare, and indeed more impracticable, in proportion 
as the various nationalities, established by nature 
or developed in the course of history, have attained, 
with the consciousness of their rights, the power of 
resisting* such assimilation. No states have ever 
acquired lasting* influence, in the history of the 
world, or attained a hig'h degree of civilization, 
except such as have possessed in a homogeneous 
population, bound together by unity of interests, a 
never -failing source whence they might constantly 
draw renewed power of action. 

Nationality must not however be confounded with 



unit}^ of race. The most important states of modern 
times are based upon a nationality which is the 
result of the fusion of different races. Such fusion 
of races, which, as regards their natural qualities, 
mutually perfect and enrich each other, invests the 
nationality resulting- from it with a superior degree 
of elasticity and political aptitude. But even after 
the fusion has taken place the most powerful of the 
component elements of the amalgam will always 
endeavour to gain the ascendancy, and to establish 
absolute sway over the others. Thus in France, 
long subsequent to the formation of a French na- 
tionality, the Celto-Eomanic element has continued 
to re-act against the Germanic element, and has in 
the course of centuries brought it into ever greater 
subjection. Thus in England, also, the Saxon ele- 
ment has always struggled to gain the ascendancy 
over the Norman element, and the future history of 
England will be intimately connected with the con- 
tinuation of the contest. It is this struggle for as- 
cendancy on the part of one, and resistance on the 
part of another, component element of one and the 
same nationality that constitutes the life and strength 
of a state. 

The history of a state is in a. great measure deter- 
mined by the character of the race which forms, or 
of the various elements which are blended, in its 
nationality, as also by the nature and proportions 
of the mixture. The nationality gives the measure 
and the limits of the possible attainments of the 



state ; the state can only foster and develop the 
germs contained in the nationality. Whatever ele- 
ment is borrowed from a foreign source to enrich 
and promote the growth of the political life of a 
state, is of permanent value only in as far as it can 
be assimilated by the given nationality, and repro- 
duced by it in new forms. If it remain in external 
connexion only with the nationality, it will never 
take root in the soil, and though by artificial 
means its life may with great care be prolonged for 
some time, these will not prevent it from pining 
away, and ultimately withering, or secure it from 
the dangers of volcanic eruptions. 

The Russian state, which seems to be growing 
every day more powerful, more oppressive, and more 
overbearing, as also more threatening' to the inde- 
pendent development of the Western nations, and 
particularly of Germany, — is based upon a nation- 
ality which cannot be considered as constituted by 
one unmixed and self-sufficient race, nor either by 
the fusion of various elements. It does not bear the 
former character, because on all sides we discern not 
only foreign impulsions, but even foreign elements 
and institutions; but it does not either bear the 
latter character, because a real fusion has not taken 
place, the native and the foreign elements being 
either hostilely opposed to each other, or merely ex- 
ternally connected. Does this state of things repre- 
sent an incomplete fusion likely to be consummated 
in future, or a hopeless attempt to blend elements 



which can never enter into intimate union ? The 
question seems worth examining-, for on the answer 
depends the most important conclusions relative to 
the future prospects of the Western nations. 

The inauspicious experiences of the last few years 
have already in lnan}^ minds given birth to such 
painful misgiving's as to our own strength, and to 
such exaggerated notions as to the power of Russia, 
that our impending abasement by this power, which 
is represented as advancing under the form of inex- 
orable destmy, has been unreservedly prognosti- 
cated ; and the regeneration of Europe through 
means of Russia has been pointed out as the last 
hope remaining to us. On the other hand many 
persons who either pretend to, or sincerely entertain 
a very contemptuous opinion of " the colossus with 
the feet of clay/' treat the matter so lightly, op- 
posing to the most evident and most incontestable 
facts nothing- but empty words and hackneyed 
phrases, that the contrary hopes and fears are only 
confirmed by their manner of proceeding. It is 
high time to form a clear conception of the Russian 
state, with its enormous pretensions and the founda- 
tion on which alone these can be based, and to con- 
sider with unbiassed mind what is the position of 
Western Europe, and more particularly of Germany, 
in relation to this state. The foundation on which 
the Russian state may be said to have been erected 
rather than to have arisen, is the Russian nation- 
ality. 



■ 



The learned are at variance as to whether there 
existed a Russian people previous to the founda- 
tion of the Russian state by Rurik. It is however 
certain, that the tribe with which the Warsegs 
(Normans) founded a state, was one of the nume- 
rous Sclavonic families, which, notwithstanding* their 
multiplicity, possess in common all essential natural 
features, and have retained this homogeneous cha- 
racter in spite of the different historical develop- 
ments which they have undergone in the course of 
ao^es. The fundamental trait in the Sclavonic cha- 
racter is the absence of the consciousness of rights 
and — no doubt consequent upon this — the absence 
of an inborn tendenc}^ to civilization. The Sclavonic 
tribes appear everywhere as chaotic masses, blindly 
devout, held captive as it were by the powers of 
nature, sensual, living in the present without a care 
for the future, devoid of the consciousness of indi- 
vidual freedom, and therefore blindly obedient, and 
destitute of the power and the desire to resist 
despotism. There are two incontestable historical 
facts which depict the Sclavonic character more 
accurately than any elaborate description could do. 
No Sclavonic state has ever been founded except 
where a decided impulse has been given from with- 
out, and in none of the states thus founded has a 
middle class grown up. That desire for individual 
activity, that love of independence, by means of 
which the citizen class in Western Europe has 
worked itself up and thrown off the yoke of barbarous 



8 

despotism does not exist among- the Sclaves. This 
people have in consequence been called an Asiatic 
people, and if by this it is meant to describe their 
chaotic, massive, inorg*anic nature, in opposition to 
the individual, organic, and fully developed nature of 
the Western races, the ^expression is undoubtedly 
well chosen. The Sclaves belong* entirely to the 
same category as the numerous^ Asiatic nations, 
who lead a rude instinctive life, without any higher 
aspirations, merely obeying* the impulses and satis- 
fying* the wants of the moment, but which, when 
roused by the onward march of some human flood, 
automatically join the movement, and following* the 
lead of some conqueror, roam through the world, 
ravaging*, plundering', and burning along* their pas- 
sage. Even when organized as states they have 
not been able to offer any, or at the highest, but a 
very ineffectual resistance to such national inunda- 
tions. The Sclaves are soft, gentle, and melancholy, 
but at the same time cruel and bloodthirsty. 
Among* no people do heroes shed so many tears as 
among the Sclaves, and among- no people do they 
commit such excessive and refined cruelties. A 
recent writer who says, in praise of the Russians, 
that although they cut down and destroy, they do not 
torture, must know very little of Russian history. * 
Among- the Celts, who in many respects resemble 
the Sclaves, we find the same apparent contradiction, 
which in reality is no contradiction at all ; for the 

* Bruno Bauer: Russland und das Germanenthum, p. 13. 



9 

softness as well as the cruelty are consequences of 
their sensual, unfree state. 

The Sclaves are capable of the most patriotic and 
self-sacrificing* energy, for their undeveloped religious 
ideas make them see in their countiy, and in the ruler 
who is the representative of it, the Godhead himself ; 
and self-devotion is the essential feature in their 
character. Taken as a mass they are tenacious of their 
rudeness and barbarism, of their ancient customs and 
time-hallowed dirt 5 and although active resistance 
forms no part of their character, they are above all 
other nations capable of passive resistance, when 
there is a question of forcing* upon them anything 
contrary to their nature. They entertain a fanatical 
hatred of everything* foreign, and are possessed of a 
national vanity as senseless as it is exaggerated ; and 
just as in individuals the greatest presumption is 
sometimes found coupled with the greatest poverty 
of intellect, so also in nations; and thus we find 
that among the Sclaves (but more particularly in 
Russia, where a feudal aristocracy could never be 
developed as was the case in Poland, where Germanic- 
Catholic influences prevailed), the pretensions put for- 
ward in the name of the nation as a whole, and the 
contempt with which everything foreign is looked 
down upon, are in proportion to the insignificance and 
utter self-abnegation of the individual in reference to 
the state. It is self-evident, and it is furthermore but 
too clearly proved by history, that in consequence of 
this absence of general rights, the ruling power in 



10 

Sclavonic nations, whether it assume the form of a 
bureaucracy as in Russia, or of an aristocracy as in 
Poland, will always be characterized by the most 
unprincipled and immoral oppression, and that there 
can be no question of the rights of the individual in 
relation to the whole ; but that on the contrary even 
all private rights will be entirely at the mercy of the 
arbitrary power. The conception of entirely free 
property, the result of individual activhVy, is quite 
foreign to the Sclaves, and in like manner as a Rus- 
sian emperor once said, that in his empire only that 
man was of importance to whom he was at any given 
moment speaking, it may be said of the Sclaves in 
general, that no one can call anything his own ex- 
cept he on whom the state has bestowed property, 
and that it is only his as long as the state does not 
take it from him. This completes the resemblance 
between this race and the majority of the Oriental 
nations. In the original, communistic organization of 
the Sclavonic rural communities, according to which 
each individual enjoys a life interest only in the 
land assigned to him, this absence of the recognition 
of the rights of the individual and of the rights of 
property, is as distinctly manifested as in the subse- 
quent establishment of the autocratic power of the 
Czar, who arbitrarily confiscates the property of his 
subjects, and binds every holder of such to the state 
(i.e. to his own person), by service, and thus keeps 
them in strict dependence on himself; while he has 
converted the once free peasantry, living in the en- 



11 

joyment of community of goods, into serfs, and has 
taken the greatest portion of the lands under his own 
administration. On the other hand it is quite natu- 
ral that this general insignificance of the individual 
as such, has given rise to a feeling of equality which, 
from a certain point of view, may be termed demo- 
cratic. In a country where the individual has no 
weight except such as he acquires through con- 
nexion with the state, i.e. with the Emperor, one 
person cannot assume superiority over another, and 
all feel themselves on a level ; for he who is some- 
thing may by the wave of a hand be thrown back 
into nothingness, and another may be put in his place. 
This is the democracy of the East, the democracy of 
slavery — democracy based on a general absence of 
rights. It is the democracy of fate, not of free 
men. It is a very common, but a very dangerous 
error to suppose that (i civilization" or " enlighten- 
ment" will remodel this slavish character, so devoid 
of the feeling of personality. When the Sclave does 
submit to civilization it cannot be denied that he ex-» 
hibits great aptitude ; he readily adopts foreign 
forms, much more readily indeed than members of 
other nations who possess a more distinctly developed 
individuality, and who, before adopting, first assimi- 
late and freely reproduce such foreign elements as 
may present themselves to them ; he then appears 
smooth and polished, but he is still far from having' 
acquired inward freedom, he has merely assumed a 
fair outward semblance under which he conceals his 
fetters. There is some truth in Bruno Bauer's ob- 



12 

serration, " that the atheist prostrates himself be- 
fore the image of a saint with the same passionate 
emotions as the Russian peasant/' The conscious- 
ness of free personality cannot be acquired by cul- 
tivation, it must be inborn, it is an attribute of the 
race. Even the most cultivated Sclave always re- 
mains a Sclave, he never loses his natural charac- 
teristics, and the absence of recognition of inherent 
rights being* the essential feature in the nation to 
which he belongs, the effect of culture on the indi- 
viduals within the limits of this nation, will only be 
to inspire a desire to rule over the masses who pos- 
sess no rights ; and in truth all the strong characters 
among the Sclaves have ever shown themselves more 
intent upon ruling over their fellows and benefiting 
themselves at the expense of their countrymen, than 
upon the development and realization of the general 
consciousness of rights. Now if we conceive civili- 
zation to be the development and realization of the 
general consciousness of rights, and barbarism to be 
the suppression of all human rights, we already here 
come to the melancholy conclusion, that among the 
Sclaves, cultivation only serves to make barbarism 
more refined and more oppressive. 

The leading features in the history of a state are 
generally prefigured in the circumstances of its 
foundation. It is of great importance as regards 
the future of the Russian state, that the founders 
of this state came from the West, and sprang from 
the same source as the founders of all the Western 
states. In its infancy the Russian state was thus 



13 

connected with the West, whence it derived its 
being-, and it could in consequence la}' claim to be 
a member of the family of European states ; this 
claim it forfeited in the progress of ages by a prac- 
tical disseverance of the connexion, and a relapse 
into the Asiastic slough, but subsequently renewed 
by reknitting the bond in a peculiar manner, and 
one which has hitherto been singularly successful. 

The Norman Wareegs founded the Russian state. 
A manly, warlike, liberty-loving' race entered into 
union with the Sclavonic tribes dwelling* around the 
Ilmen Lake— some patient, quiet, and peace-loving*, 
others living* in aimless, unrestrained wildness — and 
began to establish unity among* them. The idea of 
unity, the idea of the state, which is the leading* 
idea in the Russian mind, was thus first awakened 
by the Warsegs. This impulse from without, given 
by a superior, earnest race, with high aspirations, 
was necessary to bring* into existence, at least a 
rude desire for unity and sovereignty in a people 
originally incapable of a higher political life, and to 
render possible the formation of a Russian nation 
out of the various Sclavonic tribes, under the 
guidance of the superior race. In this case there- 
fore a. regular fusion of races took place, similar to 
the fusion which was brought about by the invasion 
of the Roman provinces by the German and Norman 
tribes ; and in like manner as modern Frenchmen 
count the Germans of the time of the Merovingians 
and Charlemagne, as well as the Celts of the Roman 
period and previous to that period, among their an- 



14 

cestors, so also the Russians look upon the com- 
panions of Rurik the Waraeg as being* as much 
their ancestors as the ancient Sclaves of Novgorod. 
As to what was the strength of the Norman addi- 
tion to the Sclavonic mass history leaves us in the 
dark, but there is reason to believe that it was pro- 
portionately weak. But even if the Sclavonic blood 
underwent but an imperceptible change through the 
Norman admixture, in the political and social insti- 
tutions of Russia, traces of the Norman conquest 
were nevertheless visible through many centuries ; 
and down to the period of Peter the Great, Russian 
history represents the reaction of the Asiatic-Sclavo- 
nic elements against the free spirit of the West, a 
reaction which was in the most cases victorious. We 
discover here a process of development exactly similar 
to that exhibited in the history of France, with this 
difference only that in Russia it has been more 
speedily brought to a close, and that owing to the 
wild and rude monoton}^ of its character, it awakens 
little sympathy, and presents to the thinking minds 
of the West no such interesting questions in relation 
to civilization as are involved in the gradual decay, 
and ultimate overthrow of the feudal aristocracy in 
France. The factors are however the same, viz. a 
nobility bent upon extending and maintaining its 
independence, and a populace reacting, in conjunc- 
tion with the royal power, against this independence 
as against something anti-national, and pressing on- 
ward towards a unity without inequalities. 



15 

As in Gaul the two nationalities stood side by 
side, distinctly separate, until after the period of 
Charlemagne, and only gradually became fused into 
a unity ; so also in Russia a somewhat similar state 
of things may be traced. Until the close of the 
10th century it was Waraegian princes who ruled 
in Russia, and these from time to time drew new T 
supplies of population from the West. Not until 
the reign of Wladimir did a Sclavonic prince ascend 
the throne, just as in France the newly formed 
French nationality ascended the throne for the first 
time in the person of Hugh Capet. But Rurik and 
his successors were as much bent upon realizing, 
internally and externally, the idea of a Russian em- 
pire, as Chlodowig and the Carolingians upon form- 
ing their empire, and the national power of the 
united Warsegs and Sclaves enabled them to do so, 
in like manner as the united power of the German 
and Romanic elements enabled Charlemagne to found 
his Frankish empire, although Charlemagne, it must 
not be forgotten, had at his command elements which 
the Wareegs did not meet with in Russia, viz. : the 
remnants of an ancient civilization. In pursuance of 
their plan, even the immediate successors of Rurik 
already pressed forward from the north to the south, 
and removed their capital from Novgorod to Iiiew * 
and the same providential impulse which in Western 
Europe impelled the Normans to make continual 
incursions into the Roman provinces, until the tot- 
tering empire fell beneath their repeated blows, 



16 

seems to have pointed out to the Warcegs the road 
towards the Eastern or Byzantine empire, and to 
have inspired the Russian nation with the fixed idea 
that it was destined to be the heir to this empire, 
and to Byzantine civilization. By a remarkable 
concatenation of favourable circumstances during 
the last few decenniums, almost every European 
event, and even such as at first sight seemed to 
threaten the dignity of the state, has contributed 
to exalt the position of the Russian Empire in Eu- 
rope, and to raise it to a dizzy height ; while on the 
other hand an almost inconceivable delusion, fostered 
by the unwearying' and systematic exertions of Rus- 
sian court publicists, has taken hold of public opinion, 
and that which is an unquestionable sign of the 
weakness of Russia, has on the contrary come to 
be looked upon as a proof of unrivalled strength, and 
as an unfailing* promise of future greatness. Men 
of brilliant talents and enjo} T ing a well-earned repu- 
tation have submitted to this delusion, and endea- 
voured to influence public opinion in relation to it ; 
and their words have gained the more credit, because 
of the evident reluctance with which their convic- 
tions have been expressed. The traditional idea of 
the conquest of Constantinople b} r the Russians, 
handed down from the time of the Waraegian princes, 
is more particularly appealed to in evidence of the 
unwearying energy of Russia and the indestructible 
power of the national will, and is represented as a 
presentiment approaching gradually its fulfilment 



17 

with the certainty of fate. If however we disengage 
ourselves from this idea of fate — which is indeed at 
variance with the general notions of the West, — 
and do not beforehand make up our minds that the 
thing- must come to pass precisely because it is an 
absurdity, and that Constantinople must be con- 
quered by the Russians in 1853, because the monk 
Agathongeles has prophesied it — if we endeavour 
upon the whole to take an unbiassed view of history, 
it cannot appear otherwise than ridiculous, to insist 
upon seeing" in the vain endeavours to reach Con- 
stantinople made by the Russians from the 10th to 
the 19 th century, a proof of the vigour of this 
nationality instead of a proof of its incurable weak- 
ness, and an indication of the limit which it cannot 
transcend. 

In the tenth century the Russians — evidently in 
obedience to an impulsion proceeding* from the Wa- 
rsegian princes— presented themselves for the first 
time before Constantinople, and similar expeditions 
to the South, by means of which the Northern tribes 
endeavoured to conquer for themselves higher cul- 
ture and more refined enjoyments, were repeatedly 
undertaken during the same century, but always 
without success. It cannot be denied, however, that 
the Russians made themselves feared by the Byzan- 
tines, and it is evident from the descriptions of the 
latter, that the military skill and prudence of the 
Warsegs, coupled with the blind devotion of the 
Sclaves, rendered them very dangerous enemies to 

B 



18 

an empire, which could oppose to them a crafty 
policy, but no effectual material power. But these 
very descriptions seem to imply that it was in fact 
the Normans, not the Sclaves, that the Byzantines 
feared ; for the expression, " the fair-haired race 
of Northerns will conquer the State/' (such was the 
original form of the famous oracle) evidently has 
reference to Swatislaw and his Wanegian compa- 
nions. In proportion as the Norman race, in the 
course of time, became absorbed by the Sclavonic, 
so did the danger menacing* Byzantium from this 
quarter decrease. Instead of being* conquered by 
the Russians, the Greek empire, on the contrary, 
made a spiritual conquest of Russia, and broug'ht 
the country into partial political dependence also ; 
and the Russians having* themselves eventually 
fallen under the yoke of the Tartars, could not even 
avail themselves of the death struggle of the empire, 
which ultimately fell by the hand of a very different 
foe, who continued to rule for centuries in its ancient 
capital. And now that after a long decline this 
power seems about to disappear from the European 
stage, not compelled by external violence, but in the 
natural course of thing's, and in consequence of the 
law of transientness, which seems more particularly 
inherent in all oriental states, now we are expected 
to believe that Russia is to be its successor, she hav- 
ing* been designated as such centuries ago, and 
having* triumphantly proved her right to the inhe- 
ritance by the tenacity with which she has clung to 



19 

old traditions. Would it not, on the contrary, be 
more reasonable to say : as in the tenth and the 
fifteenth centuries Russia was unable to conquer 
Constantinople, she will probably not either succeed 
in accomplishing her end in the nineteenth century, 
because the many unsuccessful attempts made by 
her prove her incapacity. Instead of reasoning- in 
this way, we reverse the sentence, and say : as 
Russia has made so and so many abortive attempts 
to conquer Constantinople, and still has not re- 
nounced the hope of once doing* so, she has thereby 
proved thatshe will succeed in the nineteenth century. 
A peculiar mode of reasoning*, this, in the en- 
lightened nineteenth century. 

In the West the Germans conquered for them- 
selves civilization and Christianity ; they did not 
merely submit passively to foreign influences ; they 
acted spontaneously, and the institutions which were 
born of this conflict between two worlds are mostly 
their work. The civilization of the middle ages 
bears their impress, and is the product of their rude 
but creative power. But we seek in vain in history 
for the fruits of Sclavonic spontaneity. After the 
attempts of the Wareegs to conquer Byzantium, and 
with Byzantium superior culture and a new faith, 
(L e. higher world intuitions) had miscarried, Russia 
became isolated, and she had no choice but to sink 
back into Asiatic barbarism and stagnation, or to 
accept passively the civilization coming to her from 
without. The first alternative would no doubt have 

B 2 



20 

been adopted had it not been for the ulterior effects 
of the Waraegian impulse. The Norman element, 
tending- naturally towards civilization, decided for 
the latter. Nothing- can be more characteristic of 
the Sclavonic character than the circumstances 
attending- the introduction of Christianity in Russia. 
Wladimir felt that if he wished to secure a future 
existence to the state which he governed, he must 
not continue in Pagan isolation amid Christian 
States. Byzantine Christianity and German-Catholic 
Christianity offered themselves for his selection • 
Islamism, also, recommended by the Bulgarians, 
entered the list of competitors, but was rejected 
chiefly on account of its prohibiting* the use of wine; 
even the old dethroned God of the Jews had some 
hope of being- reinstated in dignity in Russia, and 
earnestly solicited the vacant office ; but was wisely 
refused by Wladimir as having been condemned by 
history. Ten men were selected and sent out to 
examine the various forms of worship, and they 
pronounced in favour of Byzantine Christianity, 
because of its fascinating* effect on the senses, whereas 
the German form of worship seemed to them to be 
devoid of the charm of the beautiful. No doubt 
this decision was also in a great measure promoted 
by the ineradicable hatred which existed between 
the Sclaves and the Germans, who as neighbours 
often came into hostile collision with each other ; 
and to this national hatred between the two races 
was subsequently added the religious hatred which 



21 

the Ityzantine Church always nourished and will 
always nourish against Romish Christianity, and 
which likewise has its root in national antipathies. 
No sooner had Wladimir himself received baptism 
and espoused the daughter of a Greek emperor, than 
he destroyed all the idols, invited the people of 
Kiew to come down to the Dnieper, in the waters of 
which they were baptized at his command, and 
dispatched messengers to all parts of the country to 
baptize the people and introduce Christianity. In 
this manner a new religion was suddenly, and with- 
out excitino- the least outward resistance, substituted 
for the old. If we compare this mode of proceeding* 
with the long and violent internal and external 
struggles connected with the introduction of Chris- 
tianity among the Western nations, with the pro- 
longed and repeated wars, in which even the Celts 
defended their ancient national religion against the 
Romans, the facility with which Russia was Chris- 
tianized appears almost incredible \ and it can only 
be explained by the passiveness of the Sclavonic 
national character, and the merely external hold 
which religion has on it. What was in fact the 
change introduced into the faith of Russia in con- 
sequence of the establishment of the Christian 
religion? A change of names, nothing else. In 
prostrating* himself before the image of the crucified 
Saviour instead of before the image of Perun, the 
Russian was equally following an impulse of super- 
stition, and in the new God of the Chr-stians he 



22 

only continued to honour the old Russian national 
god, in whom is personified the exclusiveness and 
servility of the national character of the Sclaves. 

The acceptance of Byzantine Christianity by 
Russia was nevertheless an act fraught with mo- 
mentous consequences. The Greek Church which 
in its petrified, dogmatic formalism bears the impress 
of the East., became in Russia the adequate expres- 
sion of the predominant Asiatic element in the 
character of the Sclavonic race, and by means of 
the clergy who received their inspirations from Con- 
stantinople; it fostered in the nation that fanatical 
antagonism to the Western liberty- loving" and Roman 
Catholic states, which was further kept alive by the 
interests of Russia as an independent and self- 
sustaining empire. As such it was necessary for 
Russia to press onwards, not only in a southern, but 
also in a northern and western direction, and to 
endeavour to gain possession of maritime frontiers 
and of the seas washing the coasts ; in so doing-, 
however, she came into contact with Catholic-Ger- 
man civilization, which endeavoured to drive her 
back into her inland (binnenlandisclie) barbarism. 
Here we discover the tragic side of the Russian 
state. Every state, as such, requires a certain amount 
of culture without which it cannot exist. Even 
the rudest of the Mongol Chiefs were obliged, after 
having conquered by wild assault a variety of tribes 
and territories, to endeavour to introduce some 
degree of culture into their dominions in order to 



23 

secure the stability of their rule. The Russian state, 
however, is devoid of all the necessary internal con- 
ditions for the development of civilization, and even 
the external geographical conditions have to be 
acquired by means of conquest *. while the obstacles 
opposed to such conquest will be the greater the 
more reason there is to fear that it will lead to a 
rude and barbarous destruction of existing civiliza- 
tions, based on sound foundations and full of vital 
energies. This is the inward contradiction from 
which the Russian state is suffering. It must either 
expand itself so greatly northwards, southwards, 
and westwards, that it will necessarily overthrow the 
independence of almost all the civilized nationalities 
of Europe, and not only endanger but altogether 
destroy European civilization, or it must draw back 
within the limits of its steppes and cease to be a 
state. The latter determination can of course never 
be taken voluntarily by the state, but may be forced 
upon the imperilled nations as an act of self-defence, 
when they arrive at the knowledge of the internal 
contradiction just alluded to. For that the internal 
conditions for the development of civilization are 
totally wanting in Russia is proved beyond all doubt 
by history. The people have not the slightest desire 
to acquire culture, but on the contrary entertain a 
great hatred and contempt of it. Christianity, far 
from having* awakened the desire, has strengthened 
the hatred, and has thus proved in a most remark- 
able way how little it is capable of engendering* 



24 

civilization without the aid of other factors. With 
the exception of Novgorod and its colonies., we seek 
in vain in Russian histor}^ for organizations for the 
promotion of any of the interests of civilization, and 
the commerce even of this city, in the free constitu- 
tion of which we trace Western influences, merely 
consisted in the exchange of raw native produce for 
foreign manufactures. At a time when in Western 
Europe industrious cities flourished and a vigorous 
citizen class arose in the midst of the rudeness of the 
feudal system, and in spite of the numerous political 
convulsions, Russian history represents nothing but 
barbarous struggles for dominion, and efforts of 

OCT / 

unbridled ambition, having none of the higher inte- 
rests of life for their aim, and supported by a 
thoroughly degraded population, content in its 
slavish degeneracy — struggles in which may perhaps 
be traced a caricatured likeness to the Norman love 
of liberty, but in which a relapse into all the horrors 
of Orientalism is much more strongly depicted. 
How is it possible to deny, in view of the spectacle 
presented by Christian Russia from the eleventh to 
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, that there are 
nations incapable of a free acceptance of civilization, 
on whom it can only be forced in the fearful school 
of political oppression, and then only with doubtful 
success ! 

The key to the understanding of Russian history, 
so full of crimes and outrages, must be sought in 
the absence of the desire for civilization and the 



25 

love of enterprise, in the limitation of the industry 
of the country to the production of the most neces- 
sary thing's, in the prevailing- lawlessness, which 
afforded no guarantees to the individual for the en- 
joyment of that which he mig'ht acquire by his own 
efforts, and in the passive character of the people. 
The only active, stirring* element that appears, is 
the nobilit\ r , established by the Norman conquest ; 
but this nobility had almost entirely lost its western, 
Germanic character. That sense of liberty, of 
honour, of dig-nity, that chivalry, which in the 
western countries threw a halo of poetry even around 
barbarism, and which contained within itself the g'erms 
of the highest culture and civilization, was entirely 
wanting- in Russia. While in Poland the S clave, 
that is the Sclavonic noble, was in a certain measure 
Germanized under the influence of Roman Catholi- 
cism and Germany, in Russia the Norman nobles 
became Sclaves, that is to say, they degenerated, 
and lost all those national qualities, which in the 
Western countries have put forth fine fruits, in the 
form of a highly developed civilization. In con- 
sequence of the passiveness of the subordinate class, 
and the utter absence of resistance from below, the 
Russian nobles indulged in a tyranny more un- 
bounded, more cruel, and more refined, than any of 
which the feudal aristocracies of the West were 
ever g'uilty ; while their relations to the superior 
power could not on Sclavonic soil assume that cha- 
racter of freedom and reciprocal rig'hts and duties, 



20 

on which the Western kingdoms were founded. 
Their relations to the Grand Dukes, on the contrary, 
assumed more of a mechanical and accidental cha- 
racter, which could not fail to engender crimes and 
outrages on both sides. The feudalism of the 
West involved a principle of right and morality, 
although in a rude form ; in the relations of the 
Russian boyars to those above and below them this 
principle has entirely disappeared. The peasant is 
in every case a slave, and his is an aggravated and 
more hopeless form of servitude than that of the 
bondsman of the middle-ages ; but the boyar is also 
a slave — when he does not know how to make him- 
self feared. Until the 16th century the history of 
Russia is nothing but the history of a succession of 
servile insurrections and their gradual suppression ; 
and one hardly knows what to say, when one hears 
Russians, and even cultivated, yea revolutionary, 
Russians, congratulating their nation upon having 
escaped feudalism, while history clearly proves, that 
this nation is incapacitated for a social organization 
based upon justice, such as was the feudal system. 

The only, though weak bond, that bound Russia 
to civilization, was the Christian religion ; and the 
idea of Russian unity, of " holy Russia," which had 
taken deep rooted possession of the minds of the 
people since the days of Rurik, was the only idea 
which prevented the state from dissolving into its 
original atoms. This idea has continued in unabated 
force up to the present day, and in fact alone con- 



21 

stitutes the internal strength of the state j it has 
stood faithfully by the Grand Dukes in their con- 
flicts with the resisting* elements in the nation, and 
has enabled them to prostrate all prominent classes, 
institutions, or individualities, laying* claim to any 
kind of independence ; and has made them absolute 
rulers of a uniform mass of slaves. At first, how- 
ever, Christianity brought Russia into a state of 
necessary dependence upon Byzantium. Russia 
was a spiritual conquest of Constantinople ; the 
Greek patriarch was the chief of the Russian clergy, 
and notwithstanding' all the efforts of the Grand 
Dukes, they never succeeded in making- themselves 
independent of Constantinople in ecclesiastical mat- 
ters as long- as the Greek empire continued to exist. 
This state of dependence was necessary. The Grand 
Dukes of Russia had no other model than Byzantium 
on which to form their government, rude and bar- 
barous as it was, and thence only could they draw 
those means of government which a state even in 
the lowest and most imperfect stage of develop- 
ment cannot do without. This dependence was, 
however, at the same time a source of strength to 
the Grand Dukes, as was proved when in the 13th 
century the Byzantine empire w T as overthrown, and 
a Latin empire established in Constantinople. 

A few years subsequently to this, Russia also 
succumbed, but to the Tartars, not to the West, 
against which their national character and the re- 
ligious exclusiveness of the people protested most 



28 

determinate^, setting* at naught all attempts at con- 
version to, and union with, Catholicism. For nearly 
three hundred years the country bore the yoke of 
the Mongol Khans. The people submitted with 
slavish resignation ; the Asiatic element in their 
nature felt bound by a kindred tie to the Tartars ; 
the princes humbled themselves to the Mong-ol 
chiefs, and endeavoured by their aid to extend their 
own arbitrary and irresponsible power; in this 
school of oppression the Muscovite dynasty gra- 
dually grew up, and when the Tartar empire fell 
to pieces — not in consequence of the efforts of the 
Russian people, but in consequence of the inward 
decomposition which is the common fate of all em- 
pires formed mechanically by conquest, and devoid 
of inward unit}' — this dynasty being- supported by 
the sense of unity in the people which had again 
been quickened, and being practised in the unscru- 
pulous principles of government followed by the 
Khans, and so well adapted to the nature of the 
Sclaves, were enabled to enter the lists against what 
remained of the so-called aristocracy. The struggle 
which ensued— and which may be compared to the 
struggle of the French kings against their vassals^ 
*n as far as in this case also a political unity was 
to be established — was the most terrible, perhaps, 
recorded in the history of the world ; and as a great 
Englishman once declared, that a people that al- 
lowed itself to be burdened with taxes which it did 
not itself vote, was quite capable of allowing itself 



29 

to be used for the destruction of the liberties of E113:- 
land, so also it may with much greater right be 
maintained, that a people which not only tolerated, 
but applauded such barbarities, and whose most 
" civilized" members laud the authors of these bar- 
barities as the benefactors of Russia, is under favour- 
able circumstances, quite capable of extirpating- every 
trace of liberty and civilization from the whole con- 
tinent of Europe. The proceedings of the Czars 
from the moment they undertook to realize their 
conception of political unity, give evidence of a truly 
insane rage against everything' that bespoke inde- 
pendence, everything- that was not absolutely slav- 
ish \ and the cruelties which they practised, were 
mostly as aimless as they were refined. We discover 
in these rulers a kind of insane hatred against their 
own nation, because of its inefficiency and its in- 
aptitude for civilization, and it cannot be denied 
that this inefficiency becomes most glaringly mani- 
fest at the very period, when the unity of the state 
having been restored, the need of elements of civili- 
zation was most felt by the political rulers. These 
elements of civilization it became necessary from 
that moment- consequently long before the time of 
Peter the Great — to draw entirely from abroad, and 
more particularly from Germany. All arts, all 
trades, all handicrafts, in a word, all accomplish- 
ments required for the organization of the state and 
of the army, were borrowed from the West, from 
Germany. From the moment when, after the de- 



30 

liverance from the yoke of the Tartars, and the 
destruction of the boyar aristocracy, a political 
unity was established in Russia, the existence of 
the state has been upheld solely by the Germans, 
and it would long* since have gone to ruin, and 
broken up, and the people would have returned to 
that state of Asiatic stag-nation, to which it tends 
by nature, had it not been for the Western, and 
more particularly the German elements. Already 
under Ivan Wassiliewitsch (1 462-1505) architects, 
engineers, bellfounders, smelters, workers in gold, 
plrysicians, &c. were invited into the country from 
Germany and Italy, and already during the reign 
of the successor of this Czar, the Germans proved 
that they constituted the true strength of the state, 
while during the revolutions and disturbances which 
have since then convulsed the empire, its preserva- 
tion has also been due to the foreigners, and parti- 
cularly to the Germans dwelling within its limits. 

It is evident that we have here before us a case 
which has no equal in the history of the world. We 
know of nations who, possessing inferior capacities, 
have been ruled by a foreign race, have mixed with 
it, and have thus gradually been drawn into political 
and civilized life. Here, however, we behold the 
national rulers of a vast but either entirely uncul- 
tivated, or at the most only rudely and inefficiently 
cultivated empire, despairing of their own people, 
towards the degeneracy of which, however, no one 
had contributed more than themselves, and organ- 



31 

izing* a political system principally, yea almost ex- 
clusively, with foreign elements, and in opposition to 
the wishes and even to the genius of the nation, 
which nevertheless recognises in them its natural 
representatives and absolute masters — we behold a 
political system the chief aim of which is to keep in 
subjection the nation which forms the basis of the 
state. This double character, this self-contradiction 
in the position of the Czars, is very remarkable. 
When the Romans ruled in Gaul and civilized the 
country, they introduced their own liberal laws, 
their municipal institutions, their own great and 
creative national qualities, which elevated and civil- 
ized the people in the conquered country, though 
not until its national peculiarities had been overruled. 
The Czars, however, being themselves Russians, could 
not proceed in this manner. Had Russia been 
brought under the rule of the Germans or of any 
other civilized nation, the manner of proceeding- 
would have been similar to that of the Romans in 
Gaul. Personal rights, the rights of property, free 
institutions, would have been introduced into Russia, 
and the Russian nationality would either have been 
fertilized b} r them, or would have given way as the 
Indians give way before the civilization of the 
Anglo-Saxon colonists. But the Czars themselves 
being Russians, i. e. barbarians, could not conceive 
the idea of introducing into Russia along with 
foreign culture, the free laws and institutions of the 
foreigners, and therefore the culture which they in- 



32 

troduced by force onlv served to make its barbarism 
more refined. It is not only the artificiality, the 
hot-house nature of this so-called Eussian civilization, 
or its entire dependence on the toleration and the 
support of the Czar, and its antagonism to the genius 
of Russian nationality, that fills civilized Europe 
with alarm, but it is the object for which it will ulti- 
mately be used. The rulers of the Russian nation- 
ality represent in their person not simple absolutism, 
such as it is understood in Western Europe, for even 
absolutism may and does recognize certain rights, 
and more particularly the rights of property ; but 
in Russia, the right of property has never been re- 
cognized. It is not merely an empty phrase when 
in that country the Czar is denominated the absolute 
master of the life and property of his subjects, for 
in Russia property is held by no other tenure than 
that of service to the state, and may at any moment 
be withdrawn. 

Communism is an essential characteristic of Rus- 
sia ; it has its roots in the nationality, it constitutes 
the strength of the Czars ; and the foreign civiliza- 
tion, forced upon the country, has not been able to 
eradicate it, and probably never will be able to do so. 
For from the first moment of the introduction of the 
latter, the Russian people felt that this Western 
civilization was a dangerous enemy of its nationality, 
and in consequence it shrunk coyly from its ap- 
proach. Next to their hatred of the bo}^ars, no feel- 
ing is so strongly pronounced in the character of the 



33 

Russian people as their hatred of civilization. Even 
the commands of their worshipped Czars have not 
been able to conquer this hatred, and it is in so far 
justified, as the condition of a people having* no in- 
ward tendency to culture can only be impaired by 
having it forced upon them. It is thus to civiliza- 
tion that the Russian people owe serfdom and its un- 
equalled spread among' them. On the other hand, 
however, this ineradicable hatred of civilization 
would no doubt have been more frequently evinced 
by deed, were it not that a vag'ue feeling* tells the 
people that this civilization, so hateful to them, has 
nevertheless contributed to preserve the state, and 
with that the independence of the nation. When 
the power of the boyars had been destroyed and the 
unity of the state restored, the despotism of the 
Czars together with its mainstay, the foreign civi- 
lization, proved to be the sole powers that could save 
the state, the political unity and the independence 
of the nation. It was in vain that the ridiculous 
farce of a Russian national assembly was resorted 
to in order to reconstitute the state out of the na- 
tionality itself. What is the use of a parliament in 
a country where there are no interests, that is to 
say no rights, no liberties, no enterprise, and no 
property ! 

The state was on the brink of dissolution, it 
seemed to be precipitated towards destruction by 
inward revolutions and external enemies ; for the 
Russians also make revolutions, although our 



34 

politicasters do not seem to admit such eventuali- 
ties into their calculations, and the Russians make 
revolutions, not despite their being- slaves, but be- 
cause they are slaves. The same people who one 
day prostrate themselves before the Czar, and rub 
their eyes with spittle to give themselves the ap- 
pearance of being- moved to tears, are ready to 
make a revolution on the morrow ; for it is generally 
the slavish spirit of a people, their fettered intellects 
and want of a strong- popular will, that g-ive rise to 
those demonstrations en masse which engender re- 
volutions. Neither revolutions nor national assem- 
blies in Russia, could preserve the state, it became 
necessary to return to the despotic power of the 
Czars; they alone proved themselves substantial 
supporters of the nation. But in order to constitute 
a state and to keep it up, they were obliged to have 
recourse to the aid of foreig-n elements. 

For a long* while civilization and barbarism stood 
side by side without any internal connexion, until 
Peter the Great brought about a union, by com- 
manding- his barbarians to become civilized, and by 
insisting-, with all the unscrupulousness and arbi- 
trariness of autocratic power, upon his command 
being- carried out. And yet he only half succeeded. 
Only such persons as were in immediate official de- 
pendence on the Czar, or who were likely to be 
placed in such a relation to him, adopted the foreig-n 
polish, at least outwardly ; the kernel of the nation- 
ality assumed the position of obstinate, passive re- 



35 

sistance, and resolutely and perseveringly refused 
to adopt even the external symbol of this civiliza- 
tion, viz. the European costume. However, this 
opposition did not turn aside the Czars from their 
object. With Peter the Great the rag-e for the in- 
troduction of civilization by violent means ascended 
the throne. He burnt with the desire to raise his 
people to a level with the nations of Western Eu- 
rope, or even above them, and the Czar, accustomed 
to rule despotically, did not in the least seem to 
understand that the word of command of even the 
most powerful ruler is of no avail, if it be in oppo- 
sition to the nature of thing's. The relaxed and 
mostly unsound political condition of the Western 
states, the bad passions of the influential classes, 
which were immediately discovered and correctly 
judg-ed by his penetrative mind, were not calculated 
to discourage the hope that Russia was destined to 
be the heir to our civilization. He maintained that 
the arts and sciences, having- spread from Greece 
through Italy to Germany, the turn had at leng-th 
come to Russia. u Our turn will come likewise," 
he said, " if you will but stand by me in my earnest 
undertaking-, and accept the g*ood and renounce the 
evil, not merely in blind obedience to my commands, 
but of your own free will. I compare the prog-ress of 
the sciences with the circulation of the blood in the 
human body, and I have a presentiment that they 
will once quit their dvvelling--places in Eng-land, 
France, and Germany, that they will then abide 

c 2 



30 

some centuries with us, and subsequently return to 
their true home in Greece." However much there 
ma} r be urged against the comparison between the 
circulation of the blood and the course of the sciences, 
the truth of the observation that blind obedience 
does not suffice to engender civilization, will be ad- 
mitted by all. Yet there was in Russia nothing- but 
this absolute popular obedience, which sees in the 
rule of the Czar the rule of God, and the strength 
of which, according* to Karanisin, constitutes the 
strength of the Russian empire. There was nothing 
but this to which Peter could appeal, and, like his 
predecessors, but in a much greater measure, he was 
obliged to supply its deficiencies by means of foreign 
elements. 

Peter the Great undoubtedly marks a very im- 
portant period in the history of Russian nationality. 
This nationality would necessarily have perished in 
consequence of the progress of dissolution, which 
commenced as soon as the principle of life and 
strength in it had been destroyed with the Norman 
aristocracy, and the political unity had been recon- 
stituted on the basis of an inept and chaotic mass 
of slaves, had not Peter with a strong hand gathered 
together the materials required for the reconsolida- 
tion of the dissolving elements. But the mode in 
which he endeavoured to effect the restoration was 
very peculiar. His predecessors had likewise dis- 
covered, and practically recognized, that the state 
could only be kept up by means of foreign ele- 



37 

ments, but they had contented themselves with 
taking- these foreign elements into their service, 
while they and their people remained in the same 
condition as before. The foreign elements were, in 
their eyes, merely necessary external aids towards 
the advancement of the Old-Russian state, and they 
wei'e deficient as well in earnest desire as in the 
strength required for naturalizing* the foreign insti- 
tutions in Russia, and for reconstructing* the in- 
stitutions of the country on the same principles. It 
was herein that Peter differed from them : he forced 
the nation to familiarize itself with foreign manners 
and institutions, and to adopt them 5 he endeavoured 
to revolutionize the nation ; and he being* himself no 
Old-Russian Czar, surrounded by Byzantine eti- 
quette and held captive in the bonds of superstitious 
formalism, but a man who, though still a barbarian 
had broken with the old forms of the past, and was 
grasping* with avidity at everything new, every- 
thing connected with Western civilization, he re- 
quired that his people also should energetically 
break with the past, and should precipitate itself, as 
it were, into Western civilization, to commence 
therein a new life. He considered it his mission to 
achieve this; and notwithstanding the obstinate op* 
position which he met with, and against which he 
had to struggle his whole life, he never despaired of 
ultimate success. 

At first a masculine foreign race, the Warnegs, 
had given an impetus to the Sclavonic people, and 



38 

had formed them into a nation. Afterwards, when 
in the course of centuries and of varying- circum- 
stances, the effects of this impetus had ceased to be 
apparent, it was a single individual who g*ave a new 
impulse to the nation, by introducing- new life into 
Russia from without. As in the 9th century it 
was a more highly endowed race, which, by conquest 
and intermixture, had endeavoured to raise the 
Sclavonic race out of its natural ineptitude and in- 
capacity, it was now the example of the civilized 
"Western states which was to excite the emulation of 
Russia, and by following- which she was to enter 
into the ranks of civilized states. Peter, intent upon 
his plans, entirely overlooked the fact, that althoug-h 
it is undeniable that states exercise a great influence 
on each other, no nation has ever attained greatness 
merely by imitating- another, and that the mind of 
a nation like that of an individual, is developed not 
only by the adoption of foreign elements, but also 
by antagonism to them. 

Peter's command that they should adopt civiliza- 
tion was obeyed, though most reluctantly, by those 
who were oblig*ed by their social position to submit 
to every demand of the all-powerful Czar, that is to 
say, by the nobles, who were in direct relation with 
and dependence on the government. An independent, 
self-relying- aristocracy there had never been in 
Russia, or at all events it had ceased to exist by 
this time \ there was only an official nobility^ and 
this had not the power to resist a command of the 



39 

Czar. These nobles intrigued, and even conspired 
against the innovations ; but after their intrigues 
had been disclosed, and their plots frustrated, nothing" 
remained to them but to submit to the will of the 
Czar. They discarded the Russian costume and 
donned the garb of Western Europe ; they adopted 
the manners and customs, in which Peter himself 
set them an example \ they read European books 
and newspapers ; and there can be no doubt, that in 
many directions they evinced great aptitude and 
docility. A Europeanized society was thus formed 
in Russia, and if this were the sole object of Peter, 
he may truly foe said to have attained it. He had 
dragged his people, or at least a portion of it, con- 
siderable not only b}^ its numbers but especially by 
its mental superiority, into European civilization. 
This seemed enough to secure the future independe it 
progress of the nation. 

However, so far from this being the case, Russia 
from that moment became more dependent even on 
Western Europe than she had been before she had 
broken with the past. Not only her intellectual 
dependence was increased, in as much as every pro- 
gress, every amelioration, that originated in the 
West, had to be transplanted in an outward, 
mechanical way to Russia, this country possessing 
no power of production but merely of imitation ; 
but even the introduction of foreign, material 
elements into Russia acquired from this moment a 
greater development. It was at this period that 



40 

numbers of ill-used and adventurous men of talent 
swarmed from England and France, but more par- 
ticularly from Germany, into Russia, and rose there 
with almost fabulous rapidity, and along* a most 
dangerous path, to the highest positions in the state. 
Peter not only stood in need of the aid of the 
foreigners to teach his Russians arts and acquire- 
ments until then unknown to them, and to instruct 
and organize his army, which had been remodelled 
on the European pattern, but more than all, the 
new Russian state required the foreigners as a pro- 
tection against the native officials. 

All sincere Russians, and even such as are by no 
means friendly to the Germans, confess, though 
very reluctantly, that every Russian official, be it 
in the highest or the lowest rank, will be guilty of 
as many peculations and as many acts of extortion 
and injustice as he thinks will escape detection, and 
punishment; that the only motive that restrains 
him from committing any scandalous act, is fear ; 
and that the punctuality, probity, and incorruptible- 
ness of the Germans are indispensable to enable the 
government to carry on the administration of the 
state, even in such manner as it has been conducted 
since the time of Peter. Such confessions made by 
Russians, and by Russians who hate the Germans, 
and who make no attempt to conceal this hatred, 
render it superfluous for us to explain the reasons 
why almost all the important offices in the Russian 
empire have until very lately been filled by Germans, 



41 



The extent to which peculation and bribery exists 
in the Russian chanceries, and the remarks which 
various Russian emperors have made upon this state 
of things, are but too well known. There is no doubt 
some truth in the assertion that these vices are the 
fruits of the absolute system of government, which 
necessitates the creation of a bureaucracy that be- 
comes a state in the state, and is thus enabled in a 
great measure to evade even the superintendence of 
the supreme power. But independently of the fact 
that this absolute system has its roots in the genius 
of the people, and could not be supplanted by any 
government essentially different in form, because of 
the Russian nation being deficient in the qualities 
which are absolutely necessary for the success of a 
parliamentary form of government, it must be ad- 
mitted that the nefarious practices of which Russian 
officials are so generally guilty, also have their 
immediate source in the national character of the 
Russian people. Naturally, the Russian recognizes 
neither legal or moral relations, but only brute force. 
Of such qualities as faithfulness, honour, and native 
moral rectitude, which the free personality of the 
German race has imparted to all the Western nations, 
the Russian, as such, has no conception, and when 
subsequent education does make him in some mea-^ 
sure acquainted with them, they nevertheless remain 
foreign to his nature. Authority alone is imposing 
in his sight, and as on the one hand he exercises his 
authority over his subordinates in the most reckless 



42 

manner, and avails himself as unscrupulously of the 
benefits he derives from it, on the other hand he 
submits with a kind of fatalism, when those above 
him treat him in like manner. He feels no shame 
when his peculations are detected and punished ; 
for he knows that in the most cases, the majority of 
his judges, though more prudent, do not act more 
honourably. How a state based upon a bureaucracy 
so utterly corrupt, can be expected to endure for 
any length of time, and how it can even be held up 
to the Western nations as a model for imitation, it 
is difficult to conceive ! At all events, it is evident 
why the Russian rulers, since the time of Peter the 
Great, have so highly appreciated the Germans in 
their service ; and why they have not been anxious 
to cause a fusion between the latter and the Rus- 
sians, by which means they would only be delivered 
up to more speedy corruption. The minimum of 
rectitude which is still to be found in the service of 
the Russian state is contingent upon the presence 
of Germans in the service ; and Peter, who disco- 
vered his Russian favourites committing the basest 
frauds, although he had overwhelmed them with 
pecuniary favours, in order to strengthen them 
against temptations, and to keep them in the path 
of probity, found that, nevertheless, it was Ger- 
mans alone who devoted themselves with zeal and 
attachment to the service of the state. Had it not 
been for the German, Osterman, who with a firm 
and incorruptible hand steered the Russian vessel of 



43 

state through the storms and breakers which arose 
after Peter's death, there would perhaps at this day 
have been no Russian state in existence, at least not 
one deserving* of the appellation. 

The so-called civilization of Russia could thus only 
be achieved by Peter at the cost of a schism in the 
Russian nation, and it is this point that is of greatest 
importance to us in the present investigation. Those 
Russians who were not in immediate dependence on 
the government, that is to say, the great mass of 
peasants and craftsmen, were placed beyond the 
reach of the Czar's commands, and persisted in their 
Oriental and Byzantine customs and habits with the 
greater obstinacy, because the Church on which 
Peter threw ridicule, regarded hi3 innovations with 
hatred and suspicion, and was only prevented by its 
Byzantine impotency from resisting them with more 
resolution and activity. By his reckless revolution- 
ary rupture with the past history of his people, Peter 
placed himself in a most peculiar position to the great 
mass of this people. He stood opposed to them as 
an enemy, and a conqueror, he, who was neverthe- 
less the hereditary, irresponsible rider of the people, 
and as such venerated by the slavish mass. This 
relative position of the parties made energetic de^ 
monstrations impossible on either side. Peter, him- 
self a Russian, and earnestly bent upon making 
Russia great and powerful, and consequently anxious 
to keep alive the ancient antagonism to the West, 
which latter he as much as any of his predecessors 



44 

or successors desired to see prostrate at the feet of 
Russia — Peter was not capable of entering into such 
a struggle with his people as would entirely subdue 
its nature, and the same contradiction, which per- 
vades the whole Russian state, was thus created in 
his mind also. If Russia were to be really civilized 
after the fashion of the West, it was essential that 
this civilization should penetrate down to the very 
roots of the nationality; and if really intent upon 
this object, Peter could not limit himself to occa- 
sionally scoffing at the Church, and to depriving it 
of all power ; it would have been necessary for him 
to attack the Church in the hearts of the people, and 
to force the people into becoming either Catholics or 
Protestants. However, had he proceeded in this 
way, he would almost have ceased to be a Russian, 
he would have become an agent of the West, and 
Russia would have become an intellectual conquest 
of the West, and would sooner or later have been 
brought into regular political dependence also on the 
West. On the other hand, if even the Russian peo- 
ple had the strength required for determined and 
active resistance to the hateful foreign innovations, 
it could not have availed itself of this strength against 
its Czar, in whose will it recognized the will of the 
Deity ; it durst not revolt ; it was obliged to limit 
itself to passive resistance, putting its trust in the 
innate stubbornness of its Sclavonic nature. This 
trust was fully justified. Russian u civilization" has 
now been in existence about one century and a half, 



45 

but it has never yet penetrated into the depths of the 
nation. Until the present day the two classes 
created by Peter stand almost hostilely side by side, 
and this is the more easily accounted for, as the 
position of that class which Peter hated because it 
persisted in its old ways, has suffered the greatest 
material injuries in consequence of his innovations — 
nay its whole condition has deteriorated to a degree 
hardly ever before witnessed in history. It is only 
since Peter's reiefn that serfdom has become general 
and has acquired legal existence ; and now it would 
appear that even the autocrat, acting under the influ- 
ence of the philanthropic ideas of Europe, cannot for 
economical reasons abolish it, or even mitigate it. 
Russians are indeed white men, nevertheless they seem 
to have certain qualities in common with the negroes. 
When not compelled to work they will not do so, or 
ar least not more than is absolutely necessary to 
sustain life. 

It is evident, not only that a schism in the nation, 
such as that existing* in Russia, must weaken the 
state or at least prevent it from growing* strong, but 
that the dissevered parts must constantly tend to- 
wards reunion, although centuries may pass before 
it be accomplished. The explanation of the fact 
that a strong* Old-Russian reaction against the inno- 
vations of the deceased Czar did not take place im- 
mediately after Peter's death, may be sought 
principally in the instinctive consciousness of political 
incapacity in the Old-Russian party ; subsequently, 



46- 

reactions have chiefly been prevented by the circum- 
stance of a German dynasty having" ascended the 
throne. During- nearly a whole century govern- 
ment was carried on by means of the upper civilized 
stratum, and without any regard to the mass of the 
people, who, as has been stated, sank into a deplora- 
ble state of thraldom. The Russians in St. Peters- 
burg^ live upon the crumbs of European civilization, 
and all the ideas of the West, at the head of which 
stood France, a country that had already undergone 
a mental revolution, were allowed to flow unchecked 
into Russia. Having' no indigenous literature or 
science to feed upon, the higher circles in Russia 
feasted upon the philosoph}^ of the Encyclopedists, 
upon the works of Voltaire and Rousseau, having 
the while no conception of the condition, or the social 
and political development of which these ideas were 
the fruits. Indeed no one entertained the slightest 
intention of applying these ideas to the actual con- 
dition of Russia, and the same Catherine who wrote 
letters full of sentimental philosophy to Diderot and 
Voltaire, converted by a stroke of her pen thousands 
of free Russian peasants into serfs, without being- 
conscious of having been guilty of any inconsistency. 
Western ideas were, in Russia, simply articles of 
luxury adopted merely with a view to increasing 
the enjoyments of life, in the same way as Cham- 
pagne or any other article of occidental produce. 
Thus strikingly did the hothouse character of a civi- 
lization which has never taken root in Russia., mani- 
fest itself at that time. 






• 47 

The French revolution, and more particularly the 
events of the year 181*2, caused a change in the 
mutual relations of government and people in Rus- 
sia. Already Peter the Great had had his atten- 
tion directed by one of the most conservative of his 
old- Russian subjects to the dangerous deductions, 
as regards the monarchical, and still more the auto- 
cratic power, which might be drawn from the ideas 
of the West, and from the proceedings in several 
"civilized" countries; but Peter answered him with 
a laugh. Monarchs at that period neither dreamed 
of, nor believed in revolutions. Nevertheless revo- 
lution suddenly appeared as the ripe fruit of the 
very ideas which had been so sedulously nurtured 
at St. Petersburg*. People then grew a little sus- 
picious, but were still far from believing in the pos- 
sibility of a repetition of the French revolution in 
St. Petersburg, or even in the possibility of an at- 
tempt of the kind. Even when the lava flood of 
the revolution broke its waves against the snows 
and ice of Russia ; when all classes of the Russian 
people, after the separation of a century, were united 
by one and the same patriotic thought, and the 
gulph that lay between them seemed for a moment 
to have disappeared, — even then the government did 
not earnestly contemplate renouncing* its Western 
tendencies, and resuming its stand on Russian na- 
tionality. It was the consequences of the year 
1812 which gradually led to this determination; 
and it was by the most opposite paths that the 



48 

Russian nation reached the transitional period in 
which it is now undeniably engaged, and in which 
it is passing* from inward division to re-union. Whe- 
ther it will find itself stronger or weaker after this 
climacteric has been passed, is another question. 

The campaign in France, and the immediate and 
living" contact into which it brought the Russian 
army with the various conditions and institutions 
of the West, in all of which respect for personality, 
and a recognition of the independence of the indi- 
vidual are expressed, made of course a deep impres- 
sion by no means favourable to Russian institutions. 
It was indeed the strongly pronounced tendency to 
imitation in the Sclavonic character, which was first 
of all awakened by the contact ; but the liberal as- 
sociations which were formed in Russia after the 
return from France, and which soon assumed a re- 
volutionary character — as is but natural in a country 
where the political and national life is concentrated 
in a single point— were obliged, in order to be able 
to make some practical application of their new 
ideas, to take their stand upon Russian ground, upon 
the ground of Russian nationality ; to make them- 
selves acquainted with the peculiar circumstances 
and relations of Russia ; and to reflect upon the 
means of introducing ameliorations. The division 
of the nation into two classes was thus in the first 
instance remedied by the revolution in the world of 
ideas. The educated classes, who had until then 
turned proudly away from the people and their 



49 

wants, now began to take these wants into earnest 
consideration, with the fixed determination of ame- 
liorating- the position of the people, either by means 
of gradual reforms or by violent revolutions ; but 
the masses, who had not the slightest notion that 
their welfare was being* taken into account, remained 
perfectly indifferent when that revolutionary con- 
spiracy broke out, which the Russians in their na- 
tional vanity (which is much greater even than that 
of the French) represent as having had a socialistic 
character, because the emancipation of the peasants 
was of course named in the program. The impetus 
to the bridging over of the chasm, which had existed 
since the time of Peter, had thus been given by the 
ideas of Western Europe, and these ideas consti- 
tuted the guiding principle. But from the opposite 
side attempts were also made to gain the same goal 
by placing the Kusso-Sclavonic character, with all 
its peculiarities, in antagonism with the West. The 
first named principles are those of the European 
revolutionary party, the latter those of the Sclavo- 
philes. Peter the Great is the type of the former 
party, and their object is to continue his work, and 
to elevate the classes hitherto shut out from civiliza- 
tion and from the enjoyments of life; the latter 
party is on principle opposed to all European inno- 
vations, endeavours to bring out in sharp contrast 
the distinctive features of the Byzantine- Sclavonic 
character, and speaks in laudatory terms of the 
absence of selfishness (Selbstlosigheit), which they 

i) 



50 

say distinguishes this nationality, as also the Greek 
Church — altogether this party represents the essen- 
tial features of the Old-Russian nationality. These 
two parties are not merely the product of a certain 
period, their roots lie deep in the soil of Russian 
history, and they will necessarily be constantly re- 
produced with modifications. Although in many 
respects antagonistic they nevertheless meet on 
several points. They are both essentially Russian, 
they both desire^to heal the disruption from which the 
nation is suffering, and to bring Europe. under Rus- 
sian rule ; and above all they meet in their common 
hatred of Germany. Were a revolution to break 
out in Russia, which is certainly not probable at 
the present moment although it must unavoidably 
take place at a future period, the European party 
would no doubt, like the constitutional party in 
France, assume the foremost place ; but the Scla- 
vonic party would subsequently make itself master 
of the revolution, would eject the foreign elements, 
and then return to despotism, which would either 
degenerate into the old Asiatic stagnation, or again 
introduce foreign elements into Russia, and begin 
the cycle over again. 

It is evident that the Russian government, all 
absolute though it be, is placed in no enviable posi- 
tion between these two parties, and has no easy task 
to perform. The very facts that two such parties 
do notoriously exist, that for some time at least 
they could not even be prevented from openly ex- 



51 

pressing" their opinions and endeavouring* to g , ain 
adherents, and that even at present it is not possible 
to keep both equally in subjection, must be very 
perplexing- to a government like the Russian — 
which feels that it is, and must be, everything* in 
the state, the whole existence of which is contin- 
g'ent on its own. An autocracy which is obliged to 
choose between two antagonistic parties, which is 
oblig-ed to allow itself to be supported by the one or 
the other, and to make concessions to them, in so 
doing* makes an open confession of weakness * and 
it cannot be denied that Nicholas's government was 
beholden to the Sclavophile party, althoug-h it exerted 
itself to the utmost to assert its superiority over both. 
The more the revolutionary phenomena in Russia 
threatened the government, the more forcibly was 
the latter, though essentially German in its charac- 
ter, driven into the arms of the Sclavonic party ; and 
the more evident it became that the revolutionary 
ideas were connected with that Western civilization 
and culture which Peter and his successors had 
transplanted to Russia, the more necessary it 
became for the government to turn back and take 
its stand on the ground of Sclavonism and Russian 
nationality. Since 1825 Russia has thus drawn 
more and more back, has locked herself more up 
within herself, has placed herself in a more hostile 
position towards the West and its progressive 
ideas, and while all liberal opinions — nay almost all 
traces of anv culture differing' from that which is 

d2 



52 

inculcated by the aid of the drill-serjeant's cane — 
have been more persecuted than ever, and the 
holders of these opinions and the possessors of such 
culture have disappeared in masses in Siberia and in 
the Caucasus, the ideas of Sclavonic rule and Scla- 
vonic expansion have spread considerably. Upon 
the whole it must be confessed, that not only these 
ideas, but the real power of Russia has attained a 
greater expansion during* the reign of Nicholas, who 
is the first of the modern rulers of Russia who has 
sought a moral support in the Russian nationality, 
than during the reign of any sovereign since the 
time of Peter. Nicholas is indeed quite aware that 
the foreigners, and more particularly the Germans, 
in the Russian service, still constitute the real 
strength of the nationality as regards inward as 
well as outward action, and that although he cannot 
oppose the national Sclavonic movement he must 
strain every nerve to keep it in check and to prevent 
an outbreak of its fanaticism, which, in as far as it 
would be a national revolution, would meet the 
wishes of the other and more dangerous party. The 
only means of preventing this is great wisdom and 
moderation within, and constant movement and 
expansion in an outward direction. 

These anomalies in the position of Nicholas ex- 
plain the great importance which is with right 
attached to him personally by the Avhole of Europe. 
He rules, guides and restrains the power of Russia, 
because he knows it and judges it correctly. He 



53 

satisfies the national feeling's without allowing' him- 
self to be hurried into dangerous undertaking's. He 
represents the Russian nation in its totality and in 
its tendency to gradual internal reunion. He exerts 
himself to heal the rupture caused by Peter's un- 
scrupulous and violent mode of proceedings but this 
never makes him forget for a moment that the 
foreign or German elements constitute the true poli- 
tical strength of the Russian people. But Nicholas 
is mortal, and the problems which Russia believes 
herself called to solve — and the more so because of 
the success which has hitherto attended her under- 
takings — are pressing* forward in ever greater num- 
ber; and the question as to what constitutes the 
real and enduring strength of the Russian nation, 
is the more justified, the more the whole demeanour 
of the nation, and even of its revolutionary and 
volatile members, proves that it means to assert its 
independence and its self-reliance. (Selbstgeniige). 

The answer to this question must be sought in 
the history of the people and in its analogies with 
the history of other nations belonging to the same 
genus. 

According to an incontestable law of history, cer- 
tain nations that we would fain denominate instinc- 
tive nations (Naturvolker), i. e. sensual, unfree, 
fettered nations, ruled by the powers of material 
nature, can only receive a progressive impetus and 
higher life from a race endowed with a superior 
organization. However, according to a law equally 



54 

incontestable, such inferior nations react against the 
intruders, and while endeavouring to assimilate some 
of the foreign elements, at the same time make 
efforts to throw off and suppress such of their pro- 
perties as cannot be assimilated. The existence of 
these two laws is confirmed by the history of many 
states which either have played, or are still playing, 
an important part in history. Thus, those who in 
reviewing history do not merely fix their eyes on 
external facts, can entertain no doubt that the whole 
history of France is, so to say, but a great and long 
protracted reaction of the Celto- Romanic elements 
ao-ainst the invading' and victorious Germanic ele- 
ments —although in consequence of the fusion that 
took place, the different elements seemed blended into 
one nationality.* The history of England, also, con- 
firms the existence of this law, with this difference, 
that in that country the popular elements that were 
blended in so peculiar a manner belonged in both 
cases to those more highly endowed races which 
seem destined by nature to rule. In England the 
mass of the population was Saxon, and endowed 
with all the chaotic, individualistic tendencies that 
constitute the strength, but also the weakness, of 
Germanism in its original and unmixed state. To 
unite these centrifugal forces in one form, and to 
o-nther them round one centre, was the task of the 
Normans, who, springing originally from the same 

* Compare my work : Frankreich, seine Element e, und ihre 
Eat wield a n (j. Stuttgart, Karl Gbpel, 18:i3. 



55 

root, had undergone, without deteriorating', a short 
but beneficial course of training* in the Romanic 
school, and who established a feudal realm in Eng- 
land. In this case a voluntary fusion was more 
easy, but nevertheless the existence of the above law 
is further proved by it. The German element con- 
stantly reacted, and in the course of time filled the 
Norman forms with German spirit and German 
liberty ; but it spared the forms, feeling* truly that 
these also have their value, and that the Germans 
when left to themselves have been too apt to neglect 
them to their own detriment. This compromise be- 
tween the two elements— a compromise which does 
not exclude the reaction that creates life and motion 
in the state, but which prevents the destruction of 
one element by the other— constitutes the strength of 
England. 

In Russia it was a numerous but sensual race, 
held captive in the bonds of material nature, who 
were awakened, as it w T ere, to a consciousness of life 
by an impetus imparted by a small band of Norman 
Waraegs. The numerical inferiority of the Waraegs, 
together with their rapid and great success, proves 
the moral infirmness of the Sclavonic race, and the 
low degree in the scale of nations which it originally 
occupied. In the course of time however, the re- 
action of the great mass of Sclaves, who had remained 
on their native soil and retained their ancient man- 
ners and customs, proved necessarily the stronger 
and the more successful, because the ruling class, 



56 

though possessing* great capacities for culture and 
great powers of organization, had not attained a 
high state of culture which they could oppose to the 
Sclavonic institutions and influences. The Wareeo-s 
were absorbed by the mass of the Sclavonic people, 
and disappeared in consequence. And yet this hand- 
ful of men left traces of their individualism in Russia, 
which are perceptible up to the sixteenth century, 
and by the absorption of which the Russian nation 
subsisted up to that date ; for the life-process of 
such mixed races as come under the law alluded to 
above is as follows : the reaction, that is to say, the 
process of assimilation and excretion, creates the 
movement without which there can be no higher 
political or national life \ when the reaction is com- 
pleted, the movement ceases, and the state expires. 
Thus the political life of France is constituted by 
the reaction against Germanism and the Germanic 
elements, and this reaction having come to a close 
in the present times, the commencement of decom- 
position announces itself by unmistakeable signs ; 
and although a burning thirst remains, created by 
the elements of life which have either been assimi- 
lated or excreted — a thirst for action and for the 
solution of problems, which are grasped at the more 
deliriously, the more the vital elements become 
extinct — the power of satisfying this thirst is gone. 
That which in France has been realized in a pro- 
tracted and exciting course of history, exciting 
because of the great interests of civilization involved, 



57 

has in Russia been manifested in a manner essen- 
tially the same, but through a barren and uninte- 
resting- course of history, which may be said to be 
concluded by the re-establishment of the unity of the 
state under Ivan ; just as in France the struggle 
against the Germanic elements terminated for a 
time under Louis XI. as under Louis XIV. and 
Napoleon I., in an ever more strongly pronounced 
and purely mechanical political unity, which the 
French and their apes consider ought to be the 
highest object of all national endeavours —until 
under Napoleon I'll.) this unity has assumed such a 
potentiality, that the whole people has been trans- 
formed, if not into slaves, at least into cyphers with 
one figure at their head — until nation, state, civiliza- 
tion, society, and whatever else these fine things 
may be called, are placed in complete dependence on 
one man, and are, even according to the admission 
of the conservative classes, exposed to the rule of 
accident : a state of things which will gradually be 
recognized as the transition to regular dissolution. 
This very same spectacle of an inept mass of slaves, 
cringing- at the feet of a despot, who seems to have 
absorbed all the independent life, all the individualism 
of the nation, was presented by Russia after the last 
remnants of Warsegian individuality had been 
destroyed with the boyar nobility. The only dif- 
ference is, that the Russian nation was still in a 
barbarous state, and in so far still capable of re- 
ceiving civilization ; whereas the French have car- 



58 

ried the civilization which they are capable of 
receiving*, to such a pitch of refinement, that they 
threaten to retrace their steps and — for lack of some 
foreign barbarism wherewith to revivify themselves 
— to get up a little native barbarism. France is 
like an old man exhausted by pleasure, who, though 
living*, is in a state of partial decomposition, and who 
tickles his palate with the most pungent condiments, 
and wants to pass off the appearance of life thus 
created, for a new and higher stage of development. 
Russia was like an utterly neglected lad, in whom 
youth had as it were been petrified — in a word, like 
a kind of political Caspar Hauser. For Russia it 
was therefore possible to beg-in life over again ; not 
so for France. The education of Russia had, as it 
were, failed, and might be recommenced. As re- 
gards France all the educational arts of Romans 
and Germans have long since been exhausted. Its. 
condition is such as requires a physician, not a 
teacher; and physicians will indeed ultimately be 
attracted by the stench of its corruption ; but it is 
doubtful whether their pills will be agreeable to its 
palate. 

The feeling of unity in the Russian people was 
the only ground that remained on which a higher 
national life could be founded. This feeling had 
always existed in the Sclavonic race, and had there- 
fore not been created, but awakened, by the VVartegs, 
and directed by them to a certain point. After the 
reaction against Warsegian individualism had been 



59 

completed, this feeling- of unity found its expression 
in the despotism of the Ozars over a chaotic mass, 
devoid of all inequalities. As the inherent life of 
the nation had been crushed, but the state, the unity 
of which had been re-established, nevertheless put 
forward certain political claims, and more particu- 
larly claims to dominion over other nations, the 
Czars — being* unable to draw the necessary means 
for the satisfaction of these claims from the internal 
resources of the people, in which all that was or- 
ganic and full of life had ceased to exist — were 
obliged to draw these organic and political elements 
from abroad. With this step, which took place long- 
before the time of Peter the Great, began a new 
epoch in the history of the Eussian nation. It is, 
however, evident that in this case there was no 
question of the fusion of two races, such as consti- 
tuted the strength of the French people for instance. 
The despots purchased with money the services of 
foreigners, whom they invited to Moscow, and these 
foreigners— -who opened up, worked, and rendered 
valuable the natural resources of the Eussian soil, 
and also organized and instructed the army and 
served as body-guards — constituted the real strength 
of the state and of the nationality, without however 
blending with the latter, in proportion to which they 
always formed a very small minority. But, not- 
withstanding no fusion took place, the law of reaction 
against all foreign elements nevertheless showed 
itself active, and its effects could under such cir- 



60 

eumstances not be otherwise than suicidal, and of 
very short duration, for an imperfect body, requiring 
completion, is in this case made to react against the 
supplementary elements, and consequently against 
its own life, and it is incapable of restoring its own 
life by means of the antagonism, because the 
elements against which it reacts do not possess free, 
independent, spontaneous life, but have merely been 
mechanically introduced by the common master of 
both, and are used in his service. In France the 
Gallic, popular element was strengthened by the 
fact that the Germanic elements against which it 
pressed forward, in their turn reacted against it, in 
consequence of their free nature and their power of 
resistance, so that in the course of the long struggle 
the power of the Germanic elements gradually passed 
over into the Roman. Of such a long, exciting 
struggle, full of varying events, there can be no 
question in Russia ; the course of the struggle must 
here be as rapid as its conclusion is certain : the 
nation endeavours to throw off the foreign elements, 
and in as far as it depends upon itself, it easily suc- 
ceeds ; but it thereby weakens itself and the state, 
causes confusion and destruction, but never deserts 
the Czar, who is the symbol of its unity, or at least 
always comes back to him, as for instance in the re- 
volutions in the beginning of the 17th century ; and 
the Czar on his side, after he has established himself 
firmly and has conquered the resistance opposed to 
him, can do nothing more than recommence his 



61 



plan of introducing' foreigners, and of letting 1 new 
life flow into Russia from without. Peter the Great 
alone, believed that he should be able to evade the 
law of reaction against all foreign innovations by 
commanding his Russians to adopt the latter at 
once. It is well known, however, that he was 
obliged to rest satisfied with a merely external 
adoption, and even this only succeeded with a small 
portion of the people. The blending and fusion of 
the separate elements he was obliged to leave to 
futurity. The result is before us : in as far as the 
foreign culture really has been absorbed into the 
flesh and blood of the Russians, it has undermined 
the ancient religious-patriarchal foundation of the 
autocratic power of the Czar. The Czar, who was 
regarded by the barbarous Old-Russians as a neces- 
sary integrant of their nationality, as the source of 
life whence each one drew his supply of vitality, ap- 
pears as superfluous and hateful in his despotism, 
as soon as the individuals have received life from 
some other source, or he is at the most regarded as 
the servant of all — a view which Peter himself seems 
to have taken of his own position, when he wrote to 
the senate to elect the most capable person for chief 
of the state, without any consideration for his family, 
in case he did not return from a dangerous expedi- 
tion which he was about to undertake. This is not 
a Czardom, but a dictatorship, and is in so far fun- 
damentally different from German legitimacy. The 
substance of the Old-Russian nationality will cer- 



G2 

tainly be destroyed by this absorption of a foreign 
civilization, but the nation is not strengthened by 
it, the divided members are not reunited, the reac- 
tion is not prevented. The latter will, on the con- 
trary, only become more concentrated by the feeling 
of insufficiency and the desire for completeness which 
pervades the Russian nation, and it will hurry along 
in its one-sided course the Czar, whose natural mis- 
sion it is to stand above the two parties, and will 
attain with rapid steps the goal which it has already 
reached more than once in history. This repetition 
of the same course seems unavoidable ; the organic 
and living foreign elements, which the Czar intro- 
duces into Russia, without however assigning to 
them a position that admits of free, independent re- 
sistance, which would indeed be in contradiction to 
his autocratism, only serve to be rapidly consumed 
by the regularly ensuing Sclavonic reaction ; the 
greater the amount and the more powerful the life 
that flows in, the more there will be, of course, to 
expend again, but this expenditure will always take 
place with comparative rapidity, because under a 
despotism no elements of resistance can be developed, 
and in Russia there never can, and never will be a 
question of a strong nationality. The only thing 
which the Russian people possess, is unity ; but let 
it be observed, that unity without liberty, without 
movement is simply death, i. e. political death. 

The true condition of a nation, that draws its life 
not from itself but from abroad, and that finds the 



03 



despotism that weighs upon it increased in propor- 
tion to the amount of life which it thus imbibes, is 
comprehended by some Russians, although by far 
the greater number, in conformhVy with their brutal 
Sclavonic nature, seek compensation for the want of 
liberty at home in the pride of dominion abroad 5 
and never give a thought to the fact that the domi- 
nion exercised by a nation which is devoid of inter- 
nal life and strength, can only be very precarious 
and accidental. There are Russians who shudder 
when they contemplate the future history of their 
people, because they fully comprehend, that the im- 
mense, inexpressible sufferings, that the civilization 
forced upon it causes this people— sufferings that are 
much greater than if conquest and fusion on a grand 
scale had taken place, as in France, and had fun- 
damentally changed the Russian nationality and 
created a new nationality endowed with inward life 
— will not be compensated in the future, that this 
future will be nothing but a relapse into barbarism, 
from which the mass of the nation has never emerged, 
and that Russian history is like the web of Pene- 
lope, one period destroy ing* what the preceding one 
has created under much suffering and many tears. 
Regarding matters from this point of view, Tschaa- 
daeff, a most distinguished Russian, about twenty 
years ago, pronounced a curse upon his country and 
his nation, their past and their future, in words 
which found their way the more easily to the heart 
because they seemed so free from passion and pre- 



04 

judice^ It being* impossible in any way to inter- 
pret his work as reflecting- upon the Czar, the 
author could not be made amenable to the laws of 
Arcadius and Honorius relating' to big-h treason, 
which [form part of the penal code of Russia ; the 
autocrat therefore contented himself with declaring* 
officially that the author was a madman. This is the 
mildest fate which in Russia awaits those who give 
utterance to truth. However, such examples of 
Russian self-knowledge as that afforded by Tschaa- 
daeffare indeed very rare. As a general rule the 
Russian is in the highest degree vain and boastful, 
and besides being* devoid of the love of truth, he is 
also devoid of correct insig*ht into his true nature, 
into the nature, the bounds and limits of his nation- 
ality, and above all into the accidental causes of its 
artificial greatness. But can we wonder at this, 
when we see Germans, and even German philoso- 
phers, prophesying* that this nationality, which has 
only attained to what it is by the aid of the Ger- 
mans, will one day g*ain dominion over Europe ? 

According* to our analysis, which is based upon 
the history of Russia, and upon the knowledge of 
the laws which govern the development of all 
nationalities, there can be no doubt that the Russian 
nationality— having from the very beginning re- 
quired supplementary elements (Erg'dnzxmg) and 
owing its political life entirely to foreign elements, 
which it was either quite incapable of assimilating 
or which it could only assimilate superficially and 



Go 

imperfectly, and the absorption of which even under 
the most favourable circumstances, only transiently 
enriched its nature — cannot be considered as a strong" 
nationality, full of such vital energies as would 
render it probable that it would inherit the future. 
But even those who do not agree with our views, 
although these cannot be said to be based upon an 
arbitrary construction of historical facts, but are on 
the contrary founded on a comprehension of the real 
circumstances and factors in the history of nations, 
and although they are more particularly confirmed 
in the present day by notorious facts, which signalise 
the last stage of development of that one of the 
Romanic nations which is the most strongly impreg- 
nated with Germanic elements — even those that do 
not participate in our views must admit, that in order 
to vindicate a claim to be considered strong and fuU 
of vitality, a nation must have proved its vigour in 
contest with others of equal strength, and that in fact 
true strength is principally developed by such con- 
test. The German nation proved and increased its 
inherent strength in a struggle of centuries against 
ancient Rome, and since then it has triumphantly 
defended and maintained its nationality against 
nations enjoying a superior degree of culture, and 
whose vital energies had even been strengthened by 
an admixture of Germanic elements : such facfsp'ive 
a just claim to be considered a vigorous nationality. 
The French developed the full energies of their na- 
tionality in the struggle against England. Can 



66 

Russia point to any such events in justification of 
the assertion that the Russian nationality is vigour- 
ous and full of vital energy ? 

In face of history we must give a negative an- 
swer to this question. From the yoke of the Tartars 
the Russians were delivered by the internal dissolu- 
tion of the Mongol empire, not by their own power 
and ability.* Russia has never tried her strength in 
a great war against an organized power except when 
she has been attacked, and Charles XII. and Napo- 
leon were defeated not by Russian skill but by the 
elements, and this because of the barbarous state in 
which the country was sunk. This barbarousness 
constituted the real strength of Russia. The Rus- 
sian nation, as we have seen, represents a fixed 
unity. As such it has promoted the inward dis- 
solution of various barbarous and semi-barbarous 
nations, and has even swallowed up several of these 
nations, who possessed no capacity for independent 
life. As such also it endeavours to promote anarchy 
on all sides, in order to be called in as arbitrator, 
and thus to acquire the dictatorship. The Sclavonic 
nationality of Poland, in which German institutions 
appear only in a clumsy and corrupted form, and in 

* That the Russians broke the yoke of the Tartars by their 
own power, is one of the unhistorical assertions of Mr. Bruno 
Bauer. The famous battle which delivered Russia from the ne- 
cessity of paying tribute to the Tartars consisted therein, that the 
two armies decamped with the utmost speed as soon as they <jame 
in sight of each other. 



67 

which the} r could never take deep root, was of great 
assistance to Russia in her plans. Other matters 
which also operated to her advantage, will be touched 
upon in the sequel. In all the great European con- 
flicts Russia has always endeavoured to take a part, 
in order afterwards to arrogate to herself more 
than half the g'lor}^ by means of the most exagge- 
rated self-laudations; but she has never yet stood 
opposed as chief combatant to any of the organized 
Western powers. 

Not until the Russians have gone through at 
least some few such struggles as all the important 
civilized nations of Western Europe sustained during* 
centuries, and by which they were not exhausted, 
but on the contrary strengthened, can they lay claim 
to be considered a vigorous nationality. 

RUSSIAN POLICY. 



It is evident, and we believe furthermore that we 
have proved it, that the strength of the Russian 
nationality is not inherently its own, but is derived 
from those nations whose organizing* elements are 
used by it for its own purposes, or are engrafted on 
the nation by the despotic will of the rulers. The 
Western elements introduced into Russia have 
served to strengthen the antagonism of the East ; 
they have undertaken the task of fostering the 
growth of the enemy, who has never made a secret 
of his enmity, and of furnishing him with the means 

E 2 



/ 



G8 

of bringing* the West under his dominion. It has 
not indeed been their intention merely to serve the 
purposes of another, nor have they been conscious 
of so doing- ; but they found in the East materials, 
and a stage on which to exercise their activity ; the 
establishment and development of a governmental 
system in Russia by them, seemed to them like a 
conquest made by the West ; and they may have 
sincerely believed that Eussia would by these means 
be brought into dependence on the West, which 
would thus acquire a new field for the expansion of 
its civilization. From this point of view it is pos- 
sible to understand the enthusiasm for modern 
Russia entertained by many Germans, particularly 
of the last century. The Russians themselves, 
however, must take a very different view of the 
matter, and in this difference of views we may trace 
the germs at least of violent conflicts ; for the time 
must infallibly arrive when these opposite views will 
find themselves face to face as mighty adversaries, 
and will have to prove their truth in combat. 

In like manner as the strength of the Russian 
nationality is derived from the use of foreign, and 
more particularly of German elements, so also the 
strength of Russian policy does not depend upon 
the importance of the native interests which it re- 
presents, but upon a skilful use of foreign countries 
which entrust their interests to it, and allow them 
to be managed by it. Here, again, it is Germany 
that constitutes the better part of Russia's strength, 



69 

for it is to the diplomatic sway which it exercises 
over Germany that Russian policy owes the greater 
part of its success, and the powerful position which 
it has acquired ; and which threatens the liberty and 
progress of all European states. Yet the states 
which are now used Ity Russia for the promotion of 
her ends, started with the intention of making' 
Russia subservient to their ends, and of extending 
the determining influence of the West further north- 
wards and eastwards \ and even as it is, none of 
them would venture candidly to confess that they 
are chained to the triumphal car of Russia. In 
the policy of Russia, also, we thus find a confused 
mixture of antagonistic elements, the future sepa- 
ration of which will be accompanied by violent 
struggles. 

All the national interests of German}^ are so in- 
timately concerned in this state of things, the future 
prospects of the country in this direction are in 
some respects so seriously menaced, and in others 
so full of promise ; and its present condition suffers 
so much under the oppression of the Russo-German 
policy, that public attention must soon be concen- 
trated on this point. The apathy and inertness, 
which naturally follow an unsuccessful national 
movement, will no longer serve as an excuse, should 
the most important events connected with European 
politics — events which will have a decisive influence 
on the future, be prepared, without public opinion in 
Germany having learnt to understand the exact 



J 



70 

position of the nation with regard to them. If all 
signs be not deceptive, the national struggles of the 
West may now be considered at an end, or at least 
they cannot be recommenced except under a form 
essentially different from the previous ones, as even 
the traditions of a Napoleonic empire, it is supposed, 
cannot be realized without the aid of Eastern com- 
plications. It is the East that will be the field of 
the national struggles of the future ; here is the 
Ilhodus where Germany will have to prove and to 
accomplish her European and civilizing mission \ 
here also is the point on which it will first be proved 
how unfounded are those allusions as to the im- 
possibility of war, with which impotency and de- 
crepitude endeavour to calm their fears for their 
threatened possessions. 

The policy of Russia, and the position of Germany 
in relation to it, and altogether the significance of 
the Eastern Question, cannot be understood by the 
observation of a few more or less accidental pheno- 
mena and personalities, but must be studied in the 
whole development of the great period of human 
history in which we are engaged. 

It is the Germanic race that has given its cha- 
racter to this period, which began with the migration 
of nations. Germany was the home of the new 
life, which flowed hence into the more Western 
countries. These new elements of life were indeed 
striving towards a pole lying far beyond the mental 
ken of the Germanic world, but the feeling that the 



71 

Germans were the real bearers of the new life, and 
that it was they who had g'iven its peculiar character 
to the new period, was so powerful, that after the 
fall of the great Frank empire, and the first sepa- 
ration of the various nationalities, the empire, as the 
symbol of the temporal unity of the then existing* 
nations, devolved without a contest to the Germans. 
This centra] point of union for the Germans, and 
more particularly for the unmixed German race, 
was destroyed in the course of time, but not in con- 
sequence of any absence of vitality, but because of 
the exuberance of life in the people. In the states 
reared on the ruins of ancient Roman civilization, 
it was much easier to establish a regular unity than 
in Germany, where every individual, so to say, 
constituted a world in himself and, though recog- 
nizing in the abstract the justness of subordination, 
nevertheless refused practically to submit to it ; and 
as unity in political bodies is a potent factor, and 
exercises an irresistible power of attraction, this 
establishment of centralized (einheitlicher) states, 
temporal as well as ecclesiastical, at the western 
extremities of Europe, displaced the centre of gravitv 
of the new period from the centre of Europe, whence 
the whole movement had issued, and removed it to 
the peripher}^. In consequence of its disjointed 
condition, Germany Proper became more and more 
dependent on those States that had been reared by 
the aid of German energy, but on Roman founda- 
tions ; it had to sustain an unceasing struggle to 



72 

guard its original character against the injuries and 
adulterations it was expected by the West to submit 
to ; and although this struggle postponed for the 
moment the victory of the Roman West, that is to 
say of Rome, Spain, France, &c. over unmixed 
Germanism, it likewise prevented the spread of the 
common occidental civilization eastwards. The 
more those Western world-powers laboured, in con- 
junction with the individualistic tendencies within 
the German empire, to weaken and break down the 
imperial power, the more incomplete, limited, and 
uncertain became the extension of occidental civili- 
zation eastwards, for want of one great leading 
power 5 and this was the more to be regretted as 
Germany was not only marked out by her geo- 
graphical position to be the transmitter of this 
civilization, but she was above all others in posses- 
sion of those elements of civilization, viz. the love 
of industry, of production, and of economics, from 
which the Germanic middle classes (Burger stand) 
have chiefly sprung. 

The institution of nobility is generally, but we 
think erroneously, considered the specific quality of 
Germanism ; but in the German element such as it 
has developed itself in Europe and America, labour, 
culture, colonization and production, appear in much 
greater force. In England the Germanic nobility 
succumbed to the Normans, who were undoubtedly 
a more decidedly aristocratic nation ; but the 
Saxon middle classes rose to power under Nor- 



73 

man rule, and laid the foundations of the great- 
ness of New England. In North America the 
nobles never attained to importance. In Germany, 
where their power degenerated into licence, they 
prepared their own downfall by these veiy means, 
and may now be said to be represented solely by 
the sovereign princes, who have absorbed them ; 
whereas the German middle classes were already 
at a very early period so powerful that they nearly 
succeeded in becoming the representatives of the 
common German interests, after the empire had 
proved itself incapable of fulfilling its true mission. 
It is incontestable that it is industry, spring- 
ing from an inherent love of activity — this highest 
form of the dominion of mind over matter — that is 
the most prominent characteristic of the Germanic 
period of the human history ; the conquering* aristo- 
cracy was only the original and crude form of 
Germanic expansion. 

And this industrial element was exactly what was 
required in the East, whose Sclavonic inhabitants, 
being in all things subject to the senses and to the 
power of material nature, were incapable, as regards 
industry and civilization, of rising by their own 
strength. Borne bestowed Christianity upon the 
Poles, it is true, but with tins they only received the 
aristocratic intuitions {Adelsanschauungen) of the 
Germans, which being transplanted on Sclavonic 
soil, degenerated into still greater rudeness and 
licentiousness, and ultimately led to the downfall of 



74 

the nation. Had Germany possessed a fixed cen- 
tral point of union, which truly represented the 
characteristic features of the nation, the influence 
exercised upon the East would have been very 
different, and it would not have been limited to 
isolated attempts at establishing* colonies on the 
Baltic shores ; which colonies being* afterwards 
abandoned by the imperial power, became a prey to 
the Sclaves. Into Russia proper Western influences 
scarcely penetrated at all, in consequence of this 
weakening" of German central Europe. 

As long" as Germany was powerful under her 
great emperors there was no lack of points of con- 
tact with the Russian empire, and who can say how 
fructifying- this contact might have proved ? The 
connexion was however dissevered b}^ the progress 
of events in Germany, although Rome never lost 
sight of those Sclavonic countries. But as Russia 
had already received Christianity from Byzantium, 
Roman Catholicism had no chance of penetrating 
into the country and superseding the Greek church, 
except through the aid of important political and 
civilizing influences ; and by whom could this 
influence be exercised except by that German empire, 
which Rome strained every nerve to weaken and 
dissolve ? The fruits of this state of things — which 
may have been unavoidable under the circumstances 
— ripened in the course of centuries. 

The same causes that prevented the West from 
exercising a decided civilizing* influence on Russia, 



75 

weakened its power of resistance against the savage, 
but concentrated, and fanatic assaults of the Osmanli, 
and it was in consequence of the victorious advance 
of this Asiatic people into Europe, that the con- 
nexion with Russia was re-established. The papacy 
was by this time no longer a world -subduing* power, 
and a strong- German empire alone would have been 
able to repel the barbarians. In its dismay Europe 
recollected that in the East there was a people 
who had just been delivered from the yoke of the 
Tartars, and who bore the name of Christians. Re- 
lations were entered into with the Czar, and it was 
supposed that he might be made serviceable against 
the Osmanlis. JBut this was a g'ross miscalculation. 
That unity which had been purposely destined 
among- the Germans, and which was to be labori- 
ously developed again through a long* course of 
history, was among the Russians an inherent, never 
contested principle, deeply rooted in the essence of 
their nationality. The chief of such a people cannot 
easily be made subservient to the interests of others. 
Indeed the Czar of Russia, from the very commence- 
ment, assumed a very different position in relation 
to the Sultan from that of the princes of the West. 
The Asiatic element in the Sclavonic race formed a 
kindred link between the two people, which at once 
rendered more favourable relations possible ; and in 
like manner as the Byzantine Greeks bent more wil- 
lingly under the yoke of the Turks than under that 
of the West, and bore it more patiently, so also 



76 

Russia and the Sultan remained on a tolerably good 
footing- with each other • and at all events the Czar 
was determined not in any way to aid the West in 
securing* the Turkish booty, which he meant to 
reserve for himself. It must be confessed that the 
Czars never endured such humiliations from the 
Porte as the Princes of Western Europe submitted 
to ; but it was not the interest of Russia to weaken 
Turkey before the time, which would have been tan- 
tamount to strengthening- the Poles, the chief ene- 
mies of Russia ; and the glorious period of Osmanli 
rule thus passed by almost without any conflict with 
Russia, into whose hands the Turkish policy in the 
West was working*. Antagonism to the West was 
the fundamental principle of the Turks as of the 
Russians, and not until the power of the former was 
decidedly declining*, did Russia beg-in her attacks — 
with a view to securing* to herself the booty. 

In the meanwhile the most important events had 
taken place in the West. The unit}^ of Christendom 
had been destroyed. Germany, whose national 
genius was every day being more dangerously me- 
naced by Rome, rose up and performed a national 
act, which gave the impetus to a greater develop- 
ment of the Germanic element than had ever been 
anticipated, and which for the first time unfolded 
its most inward life, and would have led to beneficial 
practical results for Germany had it produced a 
national unity as, in accordance with its original 
character, it might have been expected to do. But 



77 

this effect having 1 failed in consequence of the in- 
capacity of the emperors of the House of Hapsburg-, 
a still greater division of the German nation became 
the necessary result. The territorial princes, taking* 
advantage of the national idea to make themselves 
almost independent by means of alliances with 
foreig-n countries, destroyed the independence of the 
true centres of civilization, the cities, and steeped 
Germany in new barbarism by means of a long* and 
bloody war. In the meanwhile France was deve- 
loping- her practical unity in the Roman spirit, and 
England thus became the sole representative of civi- 
lized and civilizing* Germanism, which, together with 
the development consequent upon the Reformation, 
laid the foundations of her industrial and commercial 
greatness and of her immense expansion. It was at 
this juncture that Peter the Great began to fix his 
attention upon Europe and Germany, and his plans 
were formed accordingly. 

It is but too well known with what skill, but at 
the same time with what barbaric unscrupulousness, 
Peter availed himself of the advantages accruing- 
from the position of Germany. The g*rand policy 
pursued by even the most insig-nificant princes; 
the impotency of the nominal chief of the empire, 
who was fully occupied with the Turks and the 
French ; finally, the position of Sweden in Northern 
Germany, so hateful to the people, and resulting- 
from the Thirty Years' war, and the adventurous 
character of Charles XII. afforded him numerous 



78 

opportunities of interfering* in the affairs of the 
North. Peter was fully aware that to take pos- 
session of the Baltic provinces, to overthrow the 
power of Sweden, to bring- Denmark and North 
Germany into dependence on himself, and to 
promote the dissolution and destruction of the 
Polish republic, were necessaiy preliminaries to 
the expansion of Russia in the south ; and it was 
with pleasure that he beheld Austria spending* her 
strength in a struggle against the Turks, the fruits 
of which, he believed he would reap if his northern 
policy proved successful. And it did prove so mar- 
vellously successful that we can hardly wonder that 
the Russian barbarian should have thought himself 
already the master of Europe. A German elector, 
who was indebted to Poland for his kingly dignity, 
condescended in conjunction with the Russian bar- 
barian, to betray his kingdom, and to be the first 
to propose the plan of a partition of Poland ; and 
in a few years the Czar was almost as completely 
master in Poland as in his own country. All 
alliances which the northern princes entered into 
with the Czar, turned to the advantage of the latter 
only, and after, Charles XII. had fallen, partly in 
consequence of his own rashness and a concatenation 
of unfavourable circumstances, the flourishing 
German colonies on the Baltic passed into the 
hands of Russia, to whom they have since been the 
greatest source of strength. But not content even 
with these fortunate results, which so to say, created 



79 

new foundations for bis empire, Peter contemplated 
penetrating* into Germany proper, never to with- 
draw again. Was not one of these petty Northern 
tyrants the cuckold of Peter's niece, did he not, in 
right of his sovereign power, call Eussian troops 
into his diminutive country, to trample down its 
rights and laws, and could it be difficult for Peter, 
under such circumstances, to induce his relative by 
promises of indemnification, to cede his rights to 
him, and thus enable him to keep Mecklenburgh, 
and thence to govern Denmark and Germany ? Or 
w r ould he have had to fear any resistance on the part of 
the Emperor, who refused to lend his ear to the 
lamentations and complaints of the estates of 
Mecklenburgh, exposed to the most barbarously re- 
fined ill-treatment and extortions of the Eussians, 
because an Emperor of the House of Hapsburg had 
neither the will or the power to defend right and 
justice in Germany ! Thus, from the first moment 
of her admission into the family of European states, 
there was no power to prevent Eussia from bringing 
the whole of the North under her rule and com- 
mand, and from gaining in u civilized" Germany, a 
fixed point from w r hich she might gradually Eus- 
sianize the whole of Europe ; there was no power to 
prevent this except — England, who being backed 
by an efficient navy, cried halt ! to the barbarian, 
in a very categorical manner, and thus saved Ger- 
many from Eussian occupation. 

That Peter, maddened by this frustration of his 



80 

schemes, conceived the most violent hatred against 
" faithless Albion/' and planned the strongest com- 
binations for her punishment, is not to be wondered 
at, particularly if we keep in mind that he was a 
barbarian \ but that the u civilized " Germans — who 
ought to be aware of their own weaknesses, and who 
ought to know how little power of resistance, as 
regards external foes, German}', constituted as she 
has hitherto been, is capable of exerting — that the 
" civilized" Germans, we sa} T , should persecute with 
senseless hatred, the very power who has repeatedly 
sino-le-handed saved Germanism and the interests of 
civilization on the Continent, that they should make 
England responsible for things which we owe en- 
tirely to our own faults - that is indeed matter for 
wonder. 

These are old stories, but are they not ever new ? 
Is not the disjointed state of Germany still the 
greatest source of strength to the policy of Russia ? 
Are not the cabinets of the sovereign German 
princes still its most pliant and useful instruments ? 
Are not, on the contrar} r , all the national interests 
of Germany opposed to the increasing power of 
Russia on the Continent ? And have these interests 
any spokesman in Germany itself? Will they not 
eventually be obliged, though reluctantly, to seek 
such spokesman in England? The weakness of 
Germany and the strength of Russia, are contingent 
on each other. Let Germany expand her strength, 
and Russia will no longer inspire fear, even in a 



81 

child. But as long- as a powerful Germany 
remains but a pious wish, although to constitute 
such a power it would suffice to unite the existing* 
forces and to bring* them to bear upon common 
objects, so long* we must consider it a most fortunate 
thing- that a foreign state in some measure, and for 
the present, keeps a check upon the encroachments 
of Russia, although the latter only draws back 
pro forma , and by the aid of German cabinets, 
recommences her game more craftily and more 
cautiously. 

Peter's too impetuous progress was certainly 
checked, and he was obliged to yield, but he only 
did this in order to be able to approach the same goal 
by a circuitous route and by the aid of diplomatic 
arts. The impatience of the barbarian, who flattered 
himself that he could reach the most distant and 
most difficult objects by one bold start, now gave 
place to the most crafty perseverance. Instead of 
storming- forward and thus exciting- distrust, the 
Russian government determined to avail itself in 
future with greater patience of the favour of circum- 
stances 5 to allow itself to be called upon when its 
services were required, and to withdraw with appa- 
rent magnanimity as soon as these had been per- 
formed, confidently trusting that this magnanimity 
would bear fruits in the future 5 to offer and yield 
advantages, which would apparently benefit, but in 
reality weaken, the receiver, and attach him to Rus- 
sia ; to flatter the desire of the princes for sovereign 

F 



82 

power ) and above all things, to exert all the arts of 
diplomacy and statesmanship, to prevent a national 
union in Germany. It is of no consequence whether 
the mysterious will of Peter the Great, in which this 
line of policy is said to be minutely laid down, be 
authentic or not ; but it is certain that since the 
time of Peter it has been very consistently carried 
out, and that under the circumstances Russia could 
not have followed airy other polic}^ The basis of 
this policy is always the division of Germany by 
alliance with the dynastic interests against the na- 
tional interests. When this basis gives way, there 
will no longer be such a thing as a Russian po- 
licy. 

In his relations with the Turks, Peter was much 
less successful, or it would perhaps be more proper 
to say that he had great reason to be thankful that 
the advantages he had gained in the North were not 
all lost here. His Turkish campaign proved a sig- 
nal failure, and had nearly ended in the whole Rus- 
sian army, together with the Emperor and Empress, 
being taken captive. This misfortune was avoided 
by means of rich presents cleverly distributed 
amongst the Turkish commanders. However little 
reason there may be to doubt the venality of the 
Turkish officials, we are nevertheless inclined to be- 
lieve that Russian gold was not on this occasion the 
only motive that induced the Turkish commanders to 
consent to a comparatively favourable treaty of peace. 
In this instance again we are inclined to attribute 



83 

greater influence to the Asiatic affinities of the two 
parties and to the feeling" of a common antagonism 
against the West, than to any outward and acciden- 
tal motive, although the Grand Vizir Mohamed, 
who concluded the peace, was sacrificed on the insti- 
gation of Charles XII. As long* as Austria was 
positively advancing ag-ainst the Osmanlis, and ad- 
vantages might accrue to her from their weakness, it 
was as little in the interest of Russia to bear too 
hardly on Turkey, as it was in the interest of Turkey 
to reduce Russia too much. Not until Austria had 
reached the limit, in relation to Turkey, which, in 
spite of the increasing- weakness of the Ottoman em- 
pire, she seemed unable to overstep — not until then 
did the real Turkish policy of Russia commence, not 
until then could she hope to reap the fruits of her 
labours, that is to say, to take possession of the 
Turkish pre)'. Up to that period the Turks and 
Russians were rather allies than antagonists. And 
does not this state of things continue in a certain 
measure even to this day 1 Does not Russia in re- 
lation to Turkey appear less like a deadly foe than 
like a kinsman who claims to have his right of inhe- 
ritance recorded, and desires in preference to have 
the matter amicably settled, and only in the last in- 
stance to have recourse to the aid of artillery. It 
can never be the object of Russia, that is to say of 
a wise Russian polic} r , to bring the Turkish empire 
to a premature eud ; Russia must on the contrary 
be willing to wait patiently until death arrives in the 

f2 



84 

natural course of things, being- merely anxious, if 
possible, to have her claims as sole heir recognized 
during* the lifetime of the testator, so that no diffi- 
culties may arise when the time for taking possession 
is at hand. 

The true field for the policj" of Russia has been, 
is, and ever will be — Germany, i. e. the German 
cabinets, by ruling which Russia thinks that she 
will be able to brave the other powers. Russia is 
a continental power, and should she even gain pos- 
session of the Sound and the Dardanelles, she will 
scarcely ever become a maritime power. As she 
does not pretend to be aggressive on the seas, she 
will probably not have very much to fear from 
fleets, if not supported by the army of one of the 
neighbouring continental powers. It is only on the 
side of Germany that Russia is vulnerable. She has 
therefore always earnestly endeavoured, and she 
will always continue to endeavour to convert the 
princely castles of Germany into strongholds of de- 
fence for herself, and it cannot be denied that she 
has laboured most skilfully and successfully in this 
direction, and that even clever and unbiassed men, 
nay, even true German patriots have been induced 
to laud Russian magnanimity and disinterestedness, 
when they ought only to have admired the finesse 
of Russian policy. 

No event could have more efficiently secured to 
Russia the sway over Germany, than the partition 
of Poland, which was first proposed by one of the 



85 

territorial princes of Germany, and was accepted 
and carried out by Russia in conjunction with 
Austria and Prussia. If the territorial extent of a 
state constituted its strength, Prussia and Austria 
would no doubt have been strengthened by this ac- 
cession to their territories. But in reality Prussia 
and Austria, though thereby separated more from 
Germany, and induced to place their centre of gra- 
vity more within themselves, did not derive any 
true accession of strength from it, but were on the 
contrary weakened by the adoption of the recalci- 
trant elements. This was doubly advantageous to 
Russia, for not only were the dangers that threat- 
ened her from the side of her neighbours diminished 
and indeed obviated, but by the transplanting' of 
Sclavonic elements into German countries, new 
means were furnished for a subsequent policy of 
dissolution and destruction ; for Russia may enter- 
tain the hope of assimilating Catholic Poland in the 
course of time, that country being originally Scla- 
vonic, but Prussia and Austria cannot possibly 
nourish such a hope. The Sclavonic-German ques- 
tion could only have attained a favourable solution 
for Germany, in case Germany, not divided territo- 
rially as now, but forming a national unity, had 
borne with the whole weight of her civilization upon 
the East, without contemplating regular incorpora- 
tion except in case of the greatest need, and by 
demand of the territory to be incorporated. In 
general, the incorporation of foreign territory is had 



86 

recourse to only where an inferior and rude s) T stem 
of policy prevails, and such incorporations have 
never yet strengthened a state or a nation for any 
length of time. In one case only they are, not so 
much excusable, as necessary, and that is when a 
nation, evidently endowed with a strong* vitality, and 
destined for independence, endeavours to secure 
strong* frontiers by the acquisition of mountains^ 
rivers, and seas, so as to ensure its political existence 
and independence from without. Prussia and Austria 
were by no means under such necessity at the time 
of the partition of Poland, and this partition was 
therefore even from the merely territorial point of 
view a serious political blunder, from which Eussia 
alone has derived benefit. 

It is a very simple, but also a somewhat rude 
system of policy, to found dominion on partition 
and division, yet, such as the world is, it is one 
that brings not so much dishonour on the state that 
pursues it, as it proves a deep inward disease in the 
people who allows itself to be partitioned. During 
the past century in particular, Russia often availed 
herself of this policy in relation to Germany, and 
the inward condition of the county afforded but too 
many opportunities for exercising- it. Nothing- was 
more agreeable to Russia than to be called in by 
one member of the empire to assist it ag-ainst an- 
other. She fought for Austria against Prussia, and 
for Prussia against Austria. However the results 
of the Seven Years' war were not very favourable 



87 

to Russia, in as far as the German people began 
from that period to soar higher as a nation, and to 
awaken to political life ; for however faulty his 
policy with regard to Poland, Frederick the Great 
nevertheless restored some degree of elevation to the 
national feelings, by the firm and decided attitude 
he assumed in respect to the encroachments of Rus- 
sia. Upon the whole, in the last decenniums before 
the outbreak of the French revolution, Germany 
was perhaps in a fair way towards national regene- 
ration, and the disastrous wars of Austria against 
the Turks might very likely have given an impul- 
sion towards such an arrangement of the internal 
relations of Germany as would have rendered pos- 
sible the adoption of a strong national policy in re- 
lation to the East, had not the French revolution 
brought new misfortunes upon Germany, and re- 
stored and increased the declining influence of Rus- 
sia in that country. 

States which have no interests of civilization to 
guard, but which are merely aiming at territorial 
expansion and dominion, must of necessity be sub- 
ject to the strongest and most abrupt changes of 
policy. Russia saw that the German princes were 
trembling 1 at the French revolution, and forthwith 
she assumed the character of their protector, and of 
an opponent of the revolution, intending afterwards 
to join France to obtain advantages from her also. 
The precariousness of che Russian alliance was evi- 
dent enough, but what could the German princes 



88 

do ? The central point, from which a national re- 
sistance ought to have been organized against the 
foreign oppression, was once for all wanting in 
Germany, and the will to create such a central 
point being likewise wanting, even noble German 
patriots could see no other means of breaking the 
French yoke, than the assistance of the Russian 
Czar. That which enabled the Czar to afford them 
this assistance was his absolute uncontrolled power, 
that is to say that absence of rights in his subjects, 
which allowed him as their ruler the most perfect 
liberty of action. When Napoleon, led on by des- 
tiny, at length repaired to Russia to complete there, 
as he thought, the impossible subjection of the con- 
tinent to the rule of France, and he succumbed in 
the barbarous country, conquered by the power of 
the elements and by the military evolutions of an 
army commanded by Germans, the consideration 
which Russia enjoyed in Europe attained its high- 
est point y for at this moment the Czar, whose coun- 
try and people had offered the first insuperable 
barrier to the triumphant onward course of the 
hitherto invincible warrior, and around whom were 
grouped the German princes, unchained from the 
triumphal car of the upstart, now appeared as the 
real chief of the victorious coalition, as the deliverer 
and rider of Europe; and the boastful Russians 
took good care that the national enthusiasm and 
the achievements of the Germans should seem as 
naught in comparison with the heroic greatness of 



89 

the Russians. The u mild and generous" Alexander, 
whose mildness and generosit}^, strange to say, were 
never the least at variance with the objects of Rus- 
sian policy— became the oracle, the arbiter of Eu- 
rope, and the Holy Alliance, that is to say, the 
subserviency of German}' to Russian objects was 
the result. 

Since the congress of Vienna re-organized the 
relations of the various European states, Russia is 
the only continental state that has continued with- 
out interruption to extend itself, and which has 
pursued a system of foreign policy deserving* of the 
name. Its expansion is of a rude nature, and in- 
imical to the spread of civilization, in other words, 
it is of a nature conformable with the economical 
and political condition of the people. Poland was 
not only swallowed up, but the last remnants of 
freedom in the country were destroyed, and it is 
now almost assimilated. In the Bosphorus and on 
the Sound, one victory after another was gained, 
and the colossus leant over towards Germany with 
ever more threatening mien. The Germans opposed 
no obstacles, nay, it is to the German cabinets that 
Russia is indebted for her success. This success is 
the fruit of the skilful and complete utilization of 
the Holy Alliance ; Russia partly led the German 
cabinets by the nose, partly converted them by the 
use of the grossest flattery into pliant instruments. 
Were it not too serious a matter, it would be amus- 
ing to read of how the German governments prided 



90 

themselves upon playing" the parts of mediators, 
when all the while it was only lacquey services they 
were performing-. The paltry issue of the German 
movement — which made Russia tremble, although 
she concealed her fear under high but hollow words, 
without daring- to act— ag-ain saved Russia from a 
great dang-er. At a comparatively very small cost 
she acquired the position of dictator of the continent ; 
she now considers herself sure of Germany, through 
means of the " governments saved by her," and it 
seems that she is preparing to reap the fruits. In 
the North she has already met with a degree of 
success which one would marvel to think that Ger- 
man governments had laboured to secure to her, if 
it were possible to marvel at anything in Germany. 
In the South also, she now contemplates taking one 
more step forward. 

There can be no question that the connexion between 
Germany and Russia, which has been brought about 
by the dynastic interests, has for along time been, and 
is still, the greatest source of strength to the policy of 
Russia. We have but to suppose the existence of a 
national German policy based upon national unity and 
national interests, and the halo of glory that surrounds 
Russia, and with it all her influence, will at once 
vanish, and she will stand revealed in her nakedness, 
as a state struggling up from barbarism into civili- 
zation, but constantly relapsing into barbarism \ and 
which, instead of exercising power and influence 
over other nations and threatening their free de- 






91 

velopment, must of necessity herself become de- 
pendent upon the influence of others. The natural 
basis of the state, the character of the people and 
the low degree which they occupy in the scale of 
civilization, render this state of subordination in- 
evitable if she be not furnished with strength from 
without. But if we suppose Germany to remain 
still longer in its disjointed state and chained to 
Russia, the latter will continue to be terrible, and 
grow more and more so, and the dismal prophecies, 
which announce that our nation will never enjoy new 
life until it be placed under the rule of Russia, will 
then most certainly be fulfilled, although they may 
now be received with scorn and laughter. It is, alas, 
but too certain that neither this time will it be 
Germany that cries halt to Russia. 

But the political relations in Germanic Europe 
have at all times been such, that when any power 
attains to a preponderance threatening- to the 
freedom and peculiarities of the other, a new antago- 
nism ( Gegensatz) immediately arises, around which 
the endangered interests rally, to restore by combat 
the lost equilibrium. Indeed the whole history of 
Europe has for many centuries been founded on this 
game of equilibration. In opposition to the Russian 
power also, another power will arise and reduce the 
colossus to its natural dimensions ; and perchance 
the hour is not far distant, when Russia will begin 
to sink down from her artificial elevation. This is 
the more probable as the antagonisms which have 



92 

kept Europe in motion during' the last two hundred 
years, are now almost exhausted. It is evident that a 
new grouping- of European states is abouttotake place. 
The contest which will arise in consequence, will, as 
little as any previous contests of the kind, be of short 
duration, however fondly those ma}^ cling' to the 
belief, who will not allow the possibility of war ; it 
will be a long' contest and perhaps full of vicissi- 
tudes. As regards ourselves it will be doubly im- 
portant, because in its course must be decided the 
great and momentous question, whether Germany is 
still capable of a new national life. 

THE TUBKISH QUESTION. 

If antagonisms, conflicts, national struggles, be 
evils, then certainly the peninsula of Haemus may 
be considered the Pandora's box of the future for 
Europe ; for the condition of that peninsula presages 
long and sanguinary combats. The gist of the 
oriental question, and the cross that weighs so 
heavily on the shoulders of the diplomatists, is this, 
that the rule of the Ottomans is tottering towards its 
close, that the subjugated populations have not the 
power of laying the foundations of a new political 
life, without foreign aid, and that the European 
powers are b} r no means inclined to allow any one 
of their number the enjoyment of the whole booty, 
and that thev can come to no agreement as to the 
partition. No one knows how to conquer the diffi- 



93 

culties which the solution of the problem offers ; 
every one feels that for this solution the old diplo- 
matic traditions of the continent will not suffice ; 
that a political reconstruction of Europe will arise 
out of its, a reconstruction the plan of which has 
not yet taken distinct form in men's minds, and 
hence the general wish to postpone the decision in- 
definitely, and to preserve the Status quo. Austria 
is most earnest in this wish, and with good reason. 
When the Osmanli entered Europe, the period of 
ideal politics had not yet gone by. The unity of 
Christendom was still a word on the lips of men, 
the emperors of the House of Hapsburg were 
allowed to be the chiefs of this Christendom, and it 
was no quite empty title, in as far as in opposition 
to the " arch-enemy " Turkey, the distinct national 
policy of the various countries was at least occasion- 
ally set aside, and from almost all Christian countries 
combatants flocked to the banners of the Hapsburgs 
to support Austria in her defensive warfare against 
the Turks. For beyond a defensive attitude the 
traditions and maxims of the most degraded 
Komanism, sunk in apathetic inertness and wrapt in 
the stiffest Spanish formalism —could not carry it. 
The power of taking- the initiative, of adopting* a 
positive and aggressive policy, could never be derived 
from those traditions. And this it was that attached 
Austria so s trongly to the status quo, to the preser- 
vation of the Ottoman empire. She felt that if 
that empire were to fall to pieces she would either 



94 

go to ruin herself, or she would be obliged to assume 
a positive character, and in so doings rise above her 
original nature and her traditions. As soon as her 
own territories had been purged of the Turks, 
Austria — feeling a well-founded distrust of the ex- 
pansive capacities of a power whose aim it is to 
weaken and oppress its own national elements of 
strength — became the truest, and, in reality, the 
most disinterested friend of the Turks ; and she has 
remained such until a very recent period, that is, until 
she was thrown out of her orbit by the revolution of 
1848, since when she has oscillated between the 
future and the past, being drawn backwards by her 
traditions and by all the interests which are repre* 
sented by those traditions, and which have been 
quickened by the reaction of the moment, while she 
is impelled forwards by her destiny and by the pro- 
gressive world-events. 

There is a stage in the life of a nation (it is the 
lowest stage, but in the East it comprises the whole 
duration of the national life) when religion, dogma, 
is everything ; when religion and state, if not ab- 
solutely one, are at least indissolubly united. 
Nations who are capable of that development which 
leads to higher culture, dissever this union, and 
gradually endeavour to make religion more and 
more a matter concerning the individual alone, and 
to separate it from the state. Then only does it 
become possible to unite various religions and 
various nationalities in one state ; the only condition 






95 

is that men shall acknowledge each others 9 equality 
of rights, in spite of the existing* difference of re- 
ligion and nationalit}^ and that the Government 
shall abstain from interfering* in religious matters, 
and shall leave these entirely to be administered by 
the congregations. The state has then but one 
task to perform, and that is, to protect the life and 
property of the individuals, and to see that justice 
is done to all. In this stage of development, the 
state is capable of unlimited expansion, because it 
recognizes everywhere the existing rights. As long, 
however, as a state is still in the low stage of 
development to which we have alluded, expansion 
always leads to fusion and assimilation, national or 
religious, and where this appears impossible, the 
expansion ceases. Though particularly called upon 
to emancipate her Government from anything like 
dogma, because the state is in itself but a complex 
of various nationalities which can never be fused 
into one, Austria was unable to raise herself from 
the lower to the higher grade of political develop- 
ment, and her expansion, therefore, found its limits 
on the frontiers of the Greek-Byzantine empire. 
She did not feel herself strong enough to force 
these countries into adopting the Catholic religion, 
nor was she capable of attaching them to herself by 
the spread of a civilization which was independent 
of the rule of dogma. She therefore fell into a 
state of stagnation, locked herself up within herself, 
played the part of the ostrich, and affected to believe 



96 

in the perpetuity of the status quo. She was in 
consequence lauded for her deep political wisdom, 
for the maintenance of the status quo was, indeed, 
in the interest of all ; but while England and Russia 
were in the meantime strengthening- themselves, and 
thereby placing- themselves in a better position to 
support their claims in relation to the Turkish in- 
heritance, when it should no longer be possible to 
postpone the catastrophe, Austria was, by this 
status quo polic} 7 , by this constant repression of the 
popular strength, by this systematic exclusion of 
progress, daily rendering' herself weaker, and more 
incapable of acting when the catastrophe should 
arrive. She was industriously playing into the 
hands of her future rivals, who were becoming more 
qualified to take possession of the inheritance, while 
she was weakening and laming 1 herself. 

This is the necessary consequence of that same 
fatal Spanish policy, that in the sixteenth century 
was opposed to the Reformation, which it did not 
comprehend as a necessary expression of national 
life, and which in the Austrian hereditary dominions, 
Avas drowned in blood. The sins of this policy — 
which fools only can call Conservatism — have not 
yet borne all their fruits \ but the time is near at 
hand when the tumours will burst, and when ex- 
piation will follow. 

Russia has shown less reluctance to disturb the 
status quo, and particularly in Turkey. This is 
quite natural. Russia has indeed known how to 



97 

attach to her interests all those powers and classes' 
in Europe who believed themselves threatened by 
revolution, in the widest sense of the word, yet 
Russia is herself essentially revolutionary. If by 
revolution be understood the violent subversion of 
existing rights and relations, Russia is most certainly 
the revolutionist of European States. Her very 
entrance into the family of European States was a 
revolutionary act ; for the balance of things was 
disturbed by it. The creator of modern Russia was 
the most fearful revolutionist that the world has 
ever beheld, although he sat upon a throne. 
Nothing* was sacred to him ; he subverted every- 
thing ancient and venerable, and when there was a 
question of attaining his ends, he shrunk from no 
means, were they ever so reprehensible in the eyes 
of religion, morality, or humanity. There can be 
no doubt that these are the qualities that make 
revolutionists. The task which the Russian State 
is called upon to perform, involves the complete sub- 
version of the European edifice, and cannot be com- 
pleted without the destruction of the most essential 
and deepest foundations of the European system. 
Supposing- even that Russia will be able to perforin 
this task, she has at all events, a very long* way to 
lay behind her before it can be accomplished ; she 
will therefore long remain revolutionary ; it will be 
very long before she becomes conservative. How- 
ever, when it suits her plans, -Russia understands 
admirably to give her most revolutionary proceed- 

G 



98 

frigs the appearance of legality. As regards Turkey, 
religion, the very element which debars Austria 
from expansion, has been to her a most useful 
instrument, and to it she owes the preponderance 
which Russian policy has enjoyed over Austrian: 
policy in the East during the last eighty years. 

Russia, as we know, received Christianity from 
Byzantium, and remained in consequence for a long 
time under the influence of that empire. The old 
Warsegian Grand Dukes endeavoured in vain to make 
Russia independent in ecclesiastical matters. This 
object was not obtained until the Ottoman conquest 
placed the Christians of the Greek empire under 
Mahomedan rule, and threw them into a state of 
servitude and subjection. After that time Russia 
had an independent patriarch of her own, that is to 
say a patriarch only dependent on the Grand Duke, 
and this chief of the Church, Peter the Great, when 
the clergy resisted his innovations, set aside without 
the least difficulty, supplying his place by a synod 
immediately dependent on the supreme power in the 
state. Since then the Church in Russia has been a 
tool in the hands of the government, who uses it for 
the purpose of securing to itself an influence over 
the common, unintellectual herd, who are blindly 
devoted to relio-ious forms. But for external action 
also this tool is of much service to the Russian 
government. The Byzantine Greeks were a lifeless 
nation even before they were brought under the 
yoke of the Turks. Their rich political and intel- 



99 

lectual life had closed in corruption, and this cor- 
ruption smoothed the way for the introduction of 
the absolute sway of unbending" dogma. Religion, 
dogma, was the only thing* that the expiring" antique 
world had still to shew forth ; the religious com- 
munity had absorbed the political. But while in the 
West the Germans, stimulated by this religion, pro- 
vided the materials for a perfectly new development 
of nations and states, which in the course of cen- 
turies put forth rich and abundant fruits, the dogma 
found in the Byzantine empire nothing that could be 
fertilized and developed. We may here, by means 
of a simple comparison, obtain the measure of the 
value of the Germanic contingent in our Western 
civilization. In the Greek empire the Christian 
religion neither put forth flowers nor fruit. It was 
there merely the expression of decrepitude and decay. 
And yet the countries of the Haemus peninsula also 
received an admixture of new blood. It has been 
satisfactorily proved that the original Greek blood 
had been considerably mixed and changed by the 
accession of new populations who flowed in inces- 
santly for several centuries. Nevertheless, this 
fusion of races in connexion with the contact with 
ancient culture, produced no new political life. The 
Sclaves either became Grecianized, that is to say, 
were either drawn within the influence of the Grecian 
corruption, and were contaminated by it, or they 
remained unmixed in their original rudeness and 
barbarism, and limited themselves to an external 

G 2 



100 

adoption of Christianity. Oiie effect only of this 
Sclavonic invasion of Greece is pointed out by 
Fallmerayer, so celebrated for his historical and 
ethnographical knowledge of those countries. u As 
long- as East Rome/' he says,* " remained essentially 
Greek, the Catholic of Byzantium and the Catholic 
of Rome met each other, if coldly, still as brothers 
and professors of the same faith. It was not until 
the Sclaves inundated Romania that the bond was 
dissevered and the schism became incurable. It 
was the presence of this people, opposed to us on 
all points, that introduced an element of irrecon- 
cileable antagonism into the heart of Anatolian 
Christendom." Mr. Fallmerayer concludes, from 
the harmony between the spirit of the Russian people 
and of the Greek population of the Ottoman empire, 
from the common spirit of antagonism against the 
West, that the Russians are destined to be the heirs 
of the Turks, and that the West will be unable to 
ward off the catastrophe. And he would no doubt 
be right, if it were possible that in the present stage 
of world-development a mere blind unity of faith 
could determine the solution of a question of such 
vast importance to the whole of Europe ; and if 
Western civilization were unable to oppose a supe- 
rior power to this unity of faith, and were obliged 
to submit not only to see the finest countries in 
Europe delivered over to Russia, and thus shut out 

* Fragment aus dem Orient, ii. p. 175. 



101 

from civilization, but to see the flourishing* civiliza- 
tion of the West, by these means, surrounded, 
endang-ered, and checked in its growth. 

At all events, Russia has certainly founded her 
schemes of future dominion over these countries on 
this community of faith with the oppressed Greeks 
of the Ottoman empire. When — under the suc- 
cessors of Peter the Great, and after Austria had 
renounced the prosecution of her victories over the 
Turks, which were indeed chiefly gained by foreign 
assistance, — Russia resumed her Turkish policy and 
conquered the coasts of the Black Sea and of the 
Sea of Azof, by means of those hecatombs of soldiers 
to which Russia, like all other barbaric powers, 
chiefly owes her military success, she always laboured 
to introduce into her treaties of peace with the Porte, 
conditions calculated gradually and quietly to secure 
to her, without any apparent design on her part, 
a kind of protectorate over the Greek Christians of 
the Turkish empire. As the Osmanli — who never 
were a progressive people (Culturvolk), while the 
Greeks have ceased to be one — always exercised 
toleration towards the Christian religion, and not 
only allowed the Greek Church freedom of faith, but 
even admitted it to a participation in the civil admi- 
nistration, they unsuspectingly and without reluc- 
tance pledged themselves to Russia in favour of the 
Greek religion, which they had never wished to 
molest. It was thus that as early as the treaty of 
Kutschuk-Kainardgi, concluded in 1775, the Porte 



102 

promised to afford protection to the Christian reli- 
gion, and authorized the servants of the Crown of 
Russia to make representations whenever anything* 
should occur which was at variance with this pro- 
mise ; and at a later period it pledged itself to place 
no obstacles in the way of the free profession and 
exercise of the Christian religion. The Porte, it 
seems, had no idea of the bearing of these promises 
and pledges, or of the conclusions which might be 
drawn from them against its sovereign rights, 
although the foreign ambassadors, and even the 
Austrian ambassador, fully understood this, and 
deplored the blindness of the Ottoman government. 
In this way Russia advanced slowly but constantly, 
while at the same time she held herself up to the Greek 
populations as their protector, and the avenger of 
their wrongs * and thus it has happened, that when 
the Russian ambassador, in the present year, de- 
manded a regular international contract, or a sub- 
stitute for such, in favour of the Greeks, the demand 
seemed, in consequence of the preceding treaties, 
quite natural, and as a matter of course. The only 
difference was, that when Russia concluded those 
previous treaties with the Porte which contain the 
premises of the last Russian claims, the Porte still 
maintained a recognized political independence. 
The empire was indeed in its decline, but no one 
anticipated its fall, and least of all the Ottoman go- 
vernment; and this accounts for the carelessness with 
W'hich it entered into engagements which a powerful 






103 

state may take upon itself with impunity, but which 
must inevitably precipitate the ruin of a weak state. 
Since then, however, a great change has taken place 
in the position of the Porte. The natural and his- 
torical basis of the empire was destroyed under the 
reign of the last Sultan, and a foreign civilization in 
sharp contrast with the genius of the Turkish people, 
and against which it must ever feel a strong repug- 
nance, has been forced upon the country. From 
that period the Porte has ceased to be self-depen- 
dent, and is only upheld by the European powers, 
as a so-called European necessity, which may, 
however, burst at any moment like a soap-bubble. 
And the danger of its doing so is the greater as it 
is rival powers that uphold the Porte, and who, 
while pretending to respect its independence, are 
constantly struggling to attain the ascendanc}' in 
relation to it ; and as in consequence of this con- 
flict, the one influence, the one system is constantly 
superseding the other, the catastrophe which all 
are anxious to delay, is in reality being accelerated. 
The issue of the revolutionary movements in the 
West in 1848, of which in most of the Western 
countries there are hardly any traces left, could not 
but have a very important and decisive influence on 
the Eastern question ; not because of the Magyar 
and Sclavonic fugitives who sought refuge in 
Turkey, and thus acquired the conviction of the 
strength of the Ottoman empire, but because while 
all the continental states were decidedly weakened 



104 

by those movements (that is to say in reality , for ac- 
cording to appearances they have been strengthened, 
and indeed some of them believe themselves invinci- 
ble since then) Russia imbibed, so to say, all the 
strength that they lost. By this new and important 
accession to the power of Russia, the conflict between 
that country and England, which has long- beet* 
ripening in silence, has been brought to a head, and 
all attempts to stifle it will prove in vain. The 
points of these two antagonistic forces, the balance 
between which will not be very soon established, 
come in contact in the East, in Constantinople. In 
the refugee question England came forward imme- 
diately, and in the most decided manner, as the pro- 
tector of Turkey against the encroachments of 
Russia and of Austria, who had been saved by her; 
and although, subsequently, in consequence of the 
unexpected events in France, the policy of England 
seemed to make a retrograde movement, this could 
not long remain so, and the apparent retrogression 
has only served as a transition to a more decided- 
exhibition of that antagonism as regards Russia, 
the necessity of which, grounded in the nature of 
things, will make itself more forcibly felt now that 
France, who was the cause of the momentary truce, 
will be obliged either definitively to join the English 
policy or to sink down into a satellite of Russia. 
Now that Russia, in consequence of the movements 
of 1848, and the part she played on that occasion, 
has become the bearer and representative of the so- 



105" 

called Conservative policy of the East, a revolu- 
tionary s}stem of policy has definitively been chalked 
out for England. With Austria, as the former centre 
of the Conservative policy, it was possible for Eng- 
land to come to an agreement ; with Russia she can 
share advantages, but she can allow herself no com- 
munity of policy. It was therefore a matter of ne- 
cessity that Russia should be diplomatically defeated 
by England in Constantinople, and as it cannot be 
supposed that Russia will yield without a, blow all 
the immense advantages which she has grimed within 
the last four years, we may reasonably expect that 
the struggle will commence, although we may not be 
able to calculate how long the first act of the drama 
will last. 

The question of the protectorate of the Greeks 
or of the sovereignty of the Porte, etc. is therefore only 
a secondary one, the true point at issue is the anta- 
gonism between England and Russia, which can no 
longer be suppressed, and which must at length 
break out into open conflict. England is indeed 
obliged, in connexion herewith, to support the 
sovereignty of the Porte, and to endeavour to 
secure to the Greeks a better position, if this be com- 
patible with the present condition of the Ottoman 
empire. This is however a position which she can- 
not maintain for any protracted period. On the 
other side Russia undertakes the protectorate of the 
Greeks, though it is now pretty clearly proved that 
the gTeater number of these are by no means anxious 



106 

to make acquaintance with the Russian knout. 
However it will hardly be possible to carry on the 
struggle in this masked way for an}^ length of time, 
as victory or defeat will be equally disastrous to the 
Ottoman empire ; but the contest will not assume its 
true character until this empire has succumbed to 
its destiny, and the reconstruction of Byzantine 
Greece comes to be the point in question. Then the 
contest between England and Eussia will become 
exciting and of the utmost importance to civilized 
Europe, for it will then be the struggle of liberty 
against slavery, of civilization against barbarism, of 
human dignity against human degradation. In this 
struggle the great " humbug" of the salvation of 
civilization by Russia will be disposed of, together 
with the morbid illusion that Russia and Germany 
must be fused into one before the Germanic spirit 
can put forth fresh blossoms. 

It would be superfluous to prove that the Turks 
are not a progressive people (Culturvolk), but on the 
contrary opposed on principle to civilization such as 
it is understood in the West, and that in proportion 
as the Porte admits Western civilization so does it 
deviate from Islam, and destroy the basis, without 
changing or destroying the spirit, of the people, 
which always continues to assert its influence with 
its ancient fanaticism, and more particularly when 
the Porte is engaged in conflict either with real or 
with so-called, Christian powers. Turkey is an 
Asiatic state, that is to say a state where personal 



107 

liberty is unknown, where the rights of the individual, 
the rights of property and the rights of labour have 
no guarantees ; a state built upon the principles of 
rude enjoyment and extortion, and therefore in its 
very origin destructive of civilization, and if not 
dangerous at least offensive to Europe by its reli- 
gious-national arrogance. The reforms promised 
by the Turkish government have hitherto proved a 
great clap-trap, and will probably continue to be so, 
because it is impossible to carry them out, not only 
on account of the temper of the people, but because 
of their want of harmony with the fundamental laws 
and institutions of the country. It is, however, 
another question whether the mere fall of the Otto- 
man empire, by means of a revolt of* the Christian 
population for instance, would improve the condition 
of the Greeks, and it is further a question whether 
such improvement would be possible in case those 
fertile lands were delivered up to Russia. 

It has been but too clearly proved that the moral 
corruption of the Greeks is greater even than that of 
the Osmanli ; that the latter are in general not only 
good-natured, but honest, true to their word, and 
conscientious, while the Greeks make no scruple of 
lying and deceiving ; and it is not so much their 
Moslem masters that drain and oppress the lower 
classes among the Greek population, as it is their 
own bishops, patriarchs and presbyters. It cannot 
even be said in excuse of the Greeks that these low 
qualities have only been developed since they have 



108 

been under the foreign yoke, for they existed long* 
before that time, and indeed the Greek population 
may be said, as regards its moral character and con- 
stitution, to have remained stationary for nearly a 
thousand years. It is impossible to suppose that 
such a people can develope a new political life within 
itself without foreign guidance, and the attempt 
which has already been made in the southern ex- 
tremity of the peninsula of Hsemus proves to excess 
this already sufficiently established truth. However, 
by delivering them up to Russia still less good 
would probably result. Russia is powerful enough 
to maintain a party in Greece, but she is not suffi- 
ciently powerful to rule Greece, and to rule it in a 
satisfactory manner. The pride of seniority over 
the nation, which originally received Christianity 
and civilization from them, would raise a much more 
violent opposition among the Greeks ag*ainst Russia, 
than against any other ruling power, although it is 
an opposition of which we hear comparatively little 
as long as there is a question of combating their 
nearest enemies the Turks. The privileges of eccle- 
siastical self-government and of the participation of 
the Church in the civil administration could not 
possibly be granted by Russia, although the Russian 
government now gives itself the appearance of wish- 
ing to secure this for the Greeks in opposition to the 
Turks ; the Greek Church would therefore inevi- 
tably soon be engaged in a violent conflict with the 
Russian Government, and the latter having no other 



109 

than rude governmental means at command, would 
be obliged to have recourse to a forced Russianizing' 
of the Greeks. In order as much as possible to con- 
ceal and obviate these internal difficulties, it will be 
necessary to assume an imposing position as regards 
foreign relations, and the consequent Russo-Greek 
wars can only be directed against Western civiliza- 
tion. Should the Russian government nevertheless 
desire to introduce civilization into the country after 
its fashion, it will be obliged in this case, as in the 
case of Russia, to borrow the elements from abroad. 
In short it is impossible to calculate the consequences 
of allowing Greece to be delivered up to Russia — if 
indeed we can bring ourselves to believe it possible 
that so immense an extension of the Russian empire 
would not at once cause it to break to pieces — without 
encountering all kinds of absurdities and improbabili- 
ties and among these the idea of the total annihilation of 
Western civilization and the reduction of the Western 
countries to a level with the Turkish provinces, that 
is to say, to the level of a barbarism against which 
England, at feast, can and will protect us, should 
even the continental states be incapable of doing so. 
The abandonment of European Turkey, or even 
of the Dardanelles only, to Russia, would be tanta- 
mount to the submission of the West to the East, 
to the subjection of Europe to the rule of Asia, in 
other words, to such a subversion of all the relations 
that have existed during* the last thousand years, 
as can onty take place when the Germanic world 



110 

has become perfectly exhausted, and its every branch 
lifeless. If Austria contemplates settling' the Eastern 
question by means of a partition in conjunction with 
Russia, so as to allow Moldavia, Wallachia, and 
Bulgaria, with Constantinople and the Dardanelles, 
to fall to the share of Russia, this proves the exist- 
ence of a territorial policy of the veiy narrowest 
dimensions. The interests of the West would be ir- 
remediably weakened by such a partition, and Aus- 
tria would by no means be strengthened, but on the 
contrary also weakened. If Germany cannot exer- 
cise an influence on the Greek countries except by 
tearing some shreds from them to tack them on 
to Austria, then Germany has nothing to expect of 
the future in the East. Nothing can be more petty 
and unstatesmanlike than such a policy, but at the 
same time, nothing can be more characteristic of 
the German princes, who announce it as an immense 
triumph when they have succeeded in getting hold 
of, and lC incorporating " a little patch of territory, 
with a few thousand " souls/' Nothing proves more 
strongly how far back Germany is »as to political 
development than the barbarism and rudeness of 
this territorial polic}^ which must first be thoroughly 
extirpated along with many other things which are 
now supposed to be again well rooted in Germany, 
before we can assume that position in the world 
which our national qualities and our historical mission 
entitle us to hold. It is because Austria, in spite of 
her universal-monarchy traditions and hankerings, 



Ill 

in reality never can get beyond this paltry territo- 
rial policy, and because she seeks her strength, not 
in the encouragement of independent interests, but 
in subjecting', incorporating, and reducing* all ele- 
ments to one and the same level beneath Hapsburg 
absolutism— that constituted as she now is, and fol- 
lowing her old traditions, she will, notwithstanding 
her favourable position, contribute comparatively 
•little to the settlement of the Eastern question. 

It is upon England that this task will devolve in the 
first instance, because having, in civil matters at least, 
thoroughly carried out the Reformation; and having 
got rid of her Hapsburgs, she has raised herself to 
the highest position among the Germanic nations, 
and has become the representative of Germanism 
in Europe. Her interests, as well as her political 
principles, and the character of her people, assign to 
her the task of solving the problem. We may regret 
that it devolves upon her and not upon Germany, 
whose position is so favourable a one for action, 
but it must be admitted that it is by her own fault 
that Germany is incapacitated, and that she owes 
thanks to England for crying halt to Russia. If the 
populations of the Greek peninsula can be awakened 
to new life, it will not be by the inundation of an 
essentially barbarous people, though this people may 
be bound to them by community of faith • it can on 
the contrary only take place through the influence 
of a free nation, whose political state is based upon 
self-government, and which is anxious to promote 



112 

self-government everywhere ; which protects labour 
and property, and knows how to open and render 
valuable the natural resources of oil countries. 
Every unbiassed observer must do the English the 
justice to admit that of all the great and ruling 
nations, which have played a part in Europe during 
a. long' course of history, it is they who understand 
the best how to govern foreign populations, not only 
dissimilar, but even quite opposed to them in cha- 
racter. The simplicity of their political conceptions 
(Staatsbegriffe), and of their principles of govern- 
ment, which they carry with them wherever they 
go, and which in fact suit all countries and all 
nationalities, because they aim at nothing* more 
than the protection of freedom, life and property, 
and disseminate everywhere the spirit of self-govern- 
ment ; their respect for foreign nationalities, which 
induces them to leave these unmolested in their most 
essential features, while the French and the Russians 
always endeavour to assimilate and to transmute ; 
the strength and manliness of their character ; and 
finally their superiority in all kinds of productive cul- 
ture : all these qualities give to the rule of the Eng- 
lish the character, not of oppressive dominion, but 
of an educational training in freedom, independence 
and civilization. They have succeeded in awakening 
nations and countries of the most opposite characters 
from their slumbers of a thousand years, and from 
political death to new life, and in opening up anew 
long-closed sources of wealth and riches, and in 



IIS 

such a manner that even the natives pay them tint 
tribute to acknowledge that they have deserved well 
of the people and of the country. On the other side 
a people like the Byzantine Greeks, that has so com- 
pletely outlived itself, has no chance of rising- from 
its deg'enerac}^ except through the influence of a race 
in every respect its superior, and which will gra- 
dually accustom it to foster and to take an interest 
in new objects connected with civilization, and will 
set it an example of limited self-government, i. e. 
self-government deprived of the meansof self-destruc- 
tion. It is in this way that England, in order to 
serve her own interests as well as those of Europe in 
general, must exercise her influence in the East ; 
nay, things will as it were of themselves take this 
course, when once the antagonism is distinctly 
exhibited and the conflict declared. 

In like manner as the struggle between England 
and France, far from being limited to those countries 
and to the seas which wash their shores, on the 
contrary put the whole of Europe in motion, so also 
the antagonism bet ween England and Russia, which 
is gradually being developed, will not only find a 
field of battle in the East, where the interests of the 
two nations clash most immediate ly, but the whole 
of Europe will be drawn into the conflict. It is 
one of the most remarkable facts in modern history, 
that, under an imperial Napoleonic dynasty, one 
feneration after the battles of Trafalgar and Water- 
loo, England and France should have drawn nearer 

H 



114 

to each other, nay, that even an alliance between 
them should have become possible. It would be 
folly to believe in the perpetual duration of such a 
state of things, to suppose that the ancient antipa- 
thies of the two nations have been entirely overcome, 
and that henceforward they will labour together in 
disinterested love to promote the spread of civiliza- 
tion. But one thing- may be unhesitatingly main- 
tained, and that is that a good understanding between 
England and France will be a necessity as long as 
the Holy Alliance is kept up, that is to say as long 
as Germany throws her weight into the scales on 
the side of Russia. The Napoleonic period in France 
— during which that country took up the gauntlet 
of the whole of Europe, and from the traditions, 
hopes and fears of which the wise politicians of the 
continent find it so difficult to emancipate them- 
selves — was a sickly and spasmodic period \ it is not 
likely that a similar period will ever return, for not 
even a new and successful French revolution, in 
which many still put their faith, would inspire that 
state with sufficient strength again to subject the 
whole of Europe — and least of all will this take 
place under Napoleon III. France will be obliged 
to submit to a modest policy, she must learn to live 
upon good terms with one or the other of her ancient 
enemies, and so long as Kussia sways the German 
governments, she will cling to England. Although 
this state of things may merely be transitional, it 
serves nevertheless to introduce a new period of 



115 

European history. The struggle between England 
and France is at end, the struggle between England 
and Russia is about to commence, and France can 
only take a part in this latter struggle, whereas in 
the former she was one of the principals. That 
France has descended from her exalted position, is 
the great fact of the present times. 

As regards Russia, the time seems to have gone 
by when she could avail herself of the dissensions 
between the two principal powers of the West, to 
extend her own power. She must now fight her 
own battles and prove her right to that dictatorship 
on the continent to which she lays claim. It is to 
her that may now be applied the words hie JRhodus, 
hie salta ! It remains to be proved whether the 
Russian nationality and the Russian state in con- 
junction with the sympathies of part of the Eastern 
populations, are strong enough to support the strug - 
gle against the West. It is not probable that Russia 
will rush precipitately into the conflict, but it is just 
as improbable that she should be able to withdraw 
from it altogether without her dignity suffering last- 
ing injury. Supposing* even that the decision be 
postponed, supposing even that the ministry which is 
at present at the head of affairs in England should 
build a golden brido-e for Russia to retreat across, 
nevertheless the lists have been opened, the com- 
batants have been designated ; they may hesitate to 
begin the struggle, but they can no longer allow 
themselves to lose sight of each other. 

H 3 



116 

Knowing' Russia, her people and histor}' as we do, 
we cannot fail to see that the only chance she has of 
being able to sustain the struggle is afforded b} r her 
influence in Germany. As long as this influence 
continues, her position is a strong one, if not for 
attack at least for defence. Here again then it is 
the weight of Germany that will determine to which 
side the balance shall lean, and in spite of all the 
phrases about the impossibility of war, Germany will, 
if she persists in her present policy, become the 
theatre of sanguinary international conflicts. It 
was in Germany that the battles were fought that 
put an end to the struggle between England and 
France ; shall we also allow the struggle between 
the east and the west to be carried on on German 
soil, when it needs but a resolution and an act on the 
part of the German people, to solve the question 
without IJoodshed ? When German states entered 
into connexion with England or with France, the 
alliance was in both cases concluded in favour of 
the interests of civilization, and the wars, though 
disastrous for the moment, led in many instances 
to beneficial consequences. But what reason 
can there be for Germany — who, if she have 
not practically adjusted all her inward conflicts, 
has at least theoretically struggled through them 
and whose interests point peremptorily towards 
national union and a national policy — what reason 
can there be for Germany to take the part of Russian 
interests, or, what comes to the same in the end, to 



117 

promote them by her moral support, and thus to 
endanger still more her own future prospects ? 

Those who behold the apathy and inertness that 
followed the recent unsuccessful national movement 
in Germany, and the depression produced by the 
terrible and blindly violent reaction, and take into 
consideration the exigencies of the present juncture, 
which call for the freshness of feeling* of a people 
full of national enthusiasm, and whose future has 
still to be conquered — those who behold the sense- 
lessness and incapacity of the individuals whom an 
adverse fate has made the representatives of German 
interests, and their hatred of every great national 
thought — cannot but look with dread forebodings 
towards the future, and cannot refrain from acknow- 
ledging that it requires a power of action such as 
our nation has never yet evinced, together with a 
great amount of good fortune, to avert the dangers 
with which our future prospects are threatened. 

THE POSITION OP GERMANY. 

If there were not every probability that the 
European conflict which is about to take place will 
be of long duration, and that it will react beneficially 
on German affairs, there would be reason to feel 
great alarm at the total absence of preparation, 
moral as well as material, which exists in Germany, 
as also at the inadequacy of the existing powers in 
face of so great an European catastrophe. Since 
the destruction of the hopes entertained in Germany 



118 

in 1848, public opinion in the country is either under 
the dominion of senseless confidence in the future, 
of blind fatalism, or of gloomy despair; and it is 
perhaps but a. waste of words to repeat either ver- 
bally or in writing, that a nation must never even in 
misfortune lose confidence in itself and in the future. 
It is indeed a curious spectacle to behold the nation 
that formed the starting* point of the present world- 
epoch, the people to whom even in the present day 
the ruling* nations cede the palm of intelligence — to 
behold this people, we say, laid prostrate, helpless 
and disjointed, politically dead, while the ruling" 
powers represent exactly the reverse of the national 
interests, being* solely bent upon the destruction of 
the national spirit; and yet to see some individuals 
founding* their hopes of national regeneration on those 
very anti national powers, in spite of the narrow 
territorial policy of Prussia, and of the Spanish- 
Hapsburg'ish antecedents of Austria, while others 
base their hopes on foreign intervention, and others 
again despair of Europe and of their own nation. 
In the present melancholy state of affairs in Germany 
it is indeed necessary sometimes to recall to mind how 
comparatively young* the nation is, historically, in 
order not to lose all faith in its future ; but never- 
theless it is difficult to escape from the thought 
that our nation has been endowed by destiny with 
every good quality except one, viz. national energy, 
without which the others never can attain a free and 
full development. 



119 

The history of Germany is more melancholy than 
that of any other great nation. Does it nevertheless 
present points on which national hopes may be 
founded ? 

Though never regularly conquered for any length 
of time, the German nation received civilization from 
without. Christianity introduced from without first 
awakened the consciousness of nationality in the 
people, and laid the foundation of its historical and 
progressive life, {Cultur-Leben) \ but immediately 
afterwards opposition, antagonism to the foreign 
countries more advanced in civilization, and from 
which the Germans felt themselves essentially 
different, drew the unmixed German countries 
together into one compact and self-dependent body. 
This twofold operation j viz. acceptance of the 
elements offered by foreign nations, and reaction 
against these elements in defence of the original 
national genius of the people, is exhibited throughout 
German history, and has up to the present time 
prevented the nation from attaining complete inde- 
pendence and self-reliance (Selbstgeniige.) The 
foreig-n influences to which Germany has been sub- 
jected have always been dangerous to her national 
independence, and although they have never suc- 
ceeded so far as to conquer and subject the country 
physically, they have sufficed to divide and disrupt 
the nation; and even the national life-manifestations, 
namely, the reaction of Germanism against the 
foreign elements, has ultimately led to division and 



120 

separation. For instance, the reaction against the 
empire, the first form in which the national unity 
was expressed, though disastrous, was nevertheless 
a national movement having its source in the depths 
of the national character, for the nation was unable 
to accept this Roman empire as the expression and 
representative of its nationality ; on the contrary the 
people with right looked upon it as something- 
foreign, while the empire employed for the govern- 
ment and union of the nation means that were 
borrowed from a foreign source, and which were at 
variance with the temper and genius of the people. 
In short, that individualism which is peculiar to the 
genius of the nation, entered into alliance with the 
influences from without which were trying* to effect 
a disruption of the nation, and " Germanic freedom," 
i.e individual license, supported by foreign aid, 
ruled supreme; but as no regular conquest b} T foreign 
countries ensued, and the various divisions of the 
country, in spite of their independent and separate 
life, were unable to disengage themselves entirely 
from each other, and to realize fully and regularly 
the much talked of sovereignty, the history of 
Germany presents in consequence in addition to its 
individualistic tendencies nothing but a series of en- 
deavours after union, that is, endeavours after 
national unity in a form suitable to the temper and 
genius of the people. These endeavours have never 
yet been successful ; their repeated failures in the 
course of centuries have contributed largely to the 



V21 

demoralization of the people ) but. perhaps they 
have nevertheless prevented a total dissolution, and 
since the separatist territorial movement has 
evidently been brought to a close, there is some 
reason to hope that that which has so often failed 
may eventually succeed. 

The individualism which during" the Middle Ages 
laboured at the destruction of the imperial power, 
was the feudal-aristocratic, out of which at a later 
period was developed the feudal -territorial indivi- 
dualism, The task of placing- a wholesome restraint 
upon this feudal license devolved upon the munici- 
palities, who, fully conscious of their mission, took 
the business in hand, and laboured to effect a settle- 
ment of the common national affairs, but proved 
incapable of accomplishing* the task by their own 
unassisted energies. It is the isolation of the divers 
forces that has always led to failure in Germany at 
the decisive moments. During the Middle Ages, 
and more particularly at the time of the Reformation, 
the imperial power in conjunction with the cities, 
mig-ht have solved the great problem ; nay, in the 
16th century the inferior nobility, aided by the pea- 
santry and the cities, might have done so in oppo- 
sition to emperor and princes. But this union of 
different strata and elements it has never been pos- 
sible to effect. It was the civil interests which 
together with the national unity suffered the most in 
consequence of this state of things ; the territorial 
princes, supported by the agricultural elements in 



122 

opposition to the industrial, made great efforts to 
obtain sovereign power, and in consequence syste- 
matically destroyed the prosperous municipalities, 
which could only thrive in the shadow of the Ger- 
man empire *. and the latter, which even towards the 
close of the Middle Ages still maintained some of 
its ancient dignity and importance, though inwardly 
rotten, and in fact very feeble, now fell into perfect 
ruin and disrepute. Since the Reformation, the 
German people has constantly retrograded as re- 
gards its national life \ all the org*ans of such life 
were destroyed at that time ; the whole subsequent 
period up to the French revolution is occupied with 
the development of the separate territorial states 
strictly after the French fashion ; and even the an- 
tagonistic elements within the nation, the conflicts 
of which, had a political unity existed, would have 
secured movement and a healthy national life, under 
the circumstances only served the purposes of the 
territorial policy, and became petrified without hav- 
ing* borne fruits or effected any g*ood for the nation 
as a whole. 

The principal cause of the course of events to 
which Ave are referring' was the overwhelming* in- 
fluence of France, to whom the separate members 
of Germany succumbed the more easily, because 
Germany as a whole, had no power to oppose to 
her except Austria and the House of Hapsburg*- 
Austria, who, thoroughly imbued with the Spanish- 
Byzantine spirit, so opposed to the German, and 



123 



fettered in the bonds of idiotic Oriental fatalism, 
had for centuries been subsisting on the forms and 
traditions of the holy Roman empire, and who sup- 
posed herself elevated above the necessity of every 
kind of exertion, except that directed against the 
strength and spirit of the German people. France, 
forming- so sharply defined a nationality and political 
unity, and Austria, such as it then was, holding 
every thing- German in contempt, and using- it 
merely as a tool, having- come in contact with each 
other as the two most advanced points of antago- 
nistic principles, the victor}^ of the former, and the 
ensuing- French period in Germany followed as in- 
evitable necessities, and it was but natural that 
Germany, though not materially conquered, should 
become a vassal of France ; and that those elements 
in Germany which still re- acted against France, 
should find their expression, not in Austria, but in 
that territorial state which was endeavouring to 
combine French political principles with German 
Protestant ideas. 

The French period in Germany closed with the 
French Revolution and the Wars of Napoleon. 
These events completed the triumph of German ter- 
ritorialism, by formally and expressly concediug 
sovereign rights to the various territorial princes,, 
and by completely destroying the German empire, 
which had long been but an empty shadow. But 
this completion of the German disruption in fact 
brought the country nearer to unity than it had 



124 

been in its ha If- completed state of division and sepa- 
ration. From that period the movement towards 
unity became the only movement possible in Germany. 
It was the French revolution and its consequences 
that again fused the German petrifaction ; the na- 
tional life then reacted, and reacted so forcibly, that 
in a short time not only the material power of France 
was broken, the country humiliated, and the con- 
queror overthrown ; but in intellectual matters also 
the Germans began gradually to emancipate them- 
selves from France — this process of emancipation 
being* greatly promoted by subsequent events. How- 
ever, the most important result of that national 
reaction which was caused by the revolution and the 
wars of the French empire, was the commencement 
of industrial life in Germany, the development of 
national industry. The system of territorial 
princedom ( Territorialfiirstenthum) is based upon 
the preponderance of the agricultural interests ; in 
order "to found the dominion of this s^ystem it was 
necessary first to ruin the German cities. The sys- 
tem of territorial princedom has grown out of the 
right of possession ; it acknowledges no rights but 
its own ; it has established people in the lands over 
which it holds the right of possession, or at least of 
supreme possession, not that they may grow rich 
and wealthy, but that they may increase its wealth 
and power, and with the reservation of the right to 
ruin the interests of these people whenever they shall 
be opposed to its own. Its principle is in fact not 



125 

to recognise any rights or interests, except such as 
are granted by itself and are identical with its own. 
But the desire for the development of national indus- 
try, and the wish to see this industry represented, 
is based upon a very different principle. This prin- 
ciple far outsteps the limits of territorial princedom, 
and denies the fundamental principle of the latter. 
Those who desire the establishment of a national 
system of commercial policy, a national representa- 
tion and protection of the industrial interests, and a 
union of the different German states into one econo- 
mic organism, must at least theoretically have got 
beyond the standing* point of territorial princedom, 
although it may not yet be quite clear to all that the 
one of these systems excludes the other, and some 
may still believe that the general national interests 
which have gradually grown up, may be defended and 
represented by one or other of the territorial princi- 
palities. This error is a very dangerous one— Ger- 
many is experiencing this at the present moment — 
but the consciousness of the existence of these inte- 
rests is nevertheless there, and the contest between 
them and the ruling powers must eventually turn 
out to the disadvantage of the latter, though not 
perhaps until great sacrifices have been made. 

While internally the development was going on, 
the consequences of which must necessarily leave the 
system of territorial principalities, as the represen- 
tative of German disruption, far behind, and lead to 
a national reconstruction of the German people., the 



120 

progress of events was greatly promoted by the state 
of thing's abroad. As long- as Germany possesses 
no central point of her own, her various parts must 
tend towards a foreign centre. This is proved by 
the relation in which the German princes placed 
themselves towards the old French kings. These 
relations were however destroyed by the revolution, 
and they have probably been rendered impossible for 
the future by the after- throes of that revolution. 
However, though finding it impossible as heretofore to 
look to the French monarch as to their real emperor, 
as to the sun round which they revolved, the German 
princes were nevertheless not induced to resume their 
stand upon the ground of nationality. On the con- 
trary, the more strongly the incompatibility between 
the national spirit and the existing territorial powers 
in Germany was brought home to the consciousness 
of the latter, the more closely they clung to Russia, 
and the German movement of 1848 completed the 
state of dependence on Russia into which even the 
greater territorial princes of Germany were dragged. 
The centre which could no longer be found in France 
because the revolution had dissevered the connecting 
bond, was found with the greater facility in the 
North-east because the reigning dynasty in Russia 
is German. But in rallying round this centre the 
German princes have more distinctly and more un- 
mistakeably than ever, separated their interests from 
those of the nation. The introduction of French 
manners and French forms of government might, 






12? 

when the latter were compared to the ridiculous 
awkwardness and the imbecile medieval forms of 
Austria, be considered an improvement. But from 
Russia Germany can neither as a whole nor in its 
various parts, expect to derive material or intellec- 
tual advantages, for the Russian nation stands op- 
posed to Germany as utterly alien in principle and 
nature. Russian influence in Germany is inimical 
to the progress of civilization, and is looked upon with 
so much deeper a feeling* of abhorrence because it is 
from Germany that Russia draws her means of in- 
fluence, because it is the elements of civilization 
which the Western countries introduced into Russia, 
with a view to calling- forth the natural powers of the 
country and making* it dependent on the West, that 
are now being" used by Russia for her own barbarous 
purposes, and for the destruction of Western civili- 
zation. 

The importance of the forthcoming" struggle as 
regards Germany, resides therein that it will place 
the discrepancy between the national interests and 
the dynastic interests in the clearest light, and that 
it will bring to a decision the question as to whether 
the former or the latter shall prevail. The national 
interests demand peremptorily that Germany shall 
adopt the cause of Western civilization against 
Eastern barbarism ; that Russia shall be forced back 
into the position which the character and inferior 
culture of her people assign to her in relation to 
the West ; that the existing state of things shall be 



128 

reversed, so that instead of German)- being- depen- 
dent upon Russia, Russia as recipient shall be de- 
pendent upon the West, as donor ; that the question 
shall be decided as to whether mere numbers shall 
hold sway over civilization, or vice versa. The 
general position of England, and the preponderance 
of her civilization render it almost impossible that 
Germany, being* bound by every tie of nature to 
English civilization, should take the side of Russia ; 
but, on the other hand, the interests of the dynasties 
make it appear almost equally impossible that the 
princes should separate their cause from that of the 
Czar. As regards these matters, the forthcoming 
conflict must occasion an important decision, which 
will lead to an entirely new order of things. 

Opposition to France, a country far advanced in 
civilization, destroyed the old form of national unity 
in Germany ; opposition to Russia, a power inimical 
to civilization, and resting upon a totally different 
basis, will lead to the development of a new form of 
German unity in accordance with the exigencies of 
the times. While contending with France, or re- 
acting against her ascendancy, Germany received 
from her incitements to the development of civiliza- 
tion which were not always of a healthy nature, 
but which, nevertheless, coming from a country 
whose influence had drawn Germany within the pale 
of civilized states, acted powerfully, and almost irre- 
sistibly. To Russia, we stand in a very different 
position : to her, Germany owes nothing, for the 



129 

Germans have only derived disadvantages from the 
influence exercised by Russia in consequence of the 
reversing* of the natural relations of the two coun- 
tries. As regards Russia, the antagonism is abso- 
lute, and has its source in first principles, and the 
struggle must fire the spirit of the whole and un- 
divided nation. Such a state of things was never 
witnessed in former times. It may conduce to place 
Germany in the noblest position, a position from 
which it may bring the whole strength of its origi- 
nal Germanic genius to bear upon the West and 
upon the East, in the former direction raising up 
and quickening the Germanic elements hitherto 
weighed down by the genius of Rjomanism, in the 
latter direction fertilizing an uncultivated soil, and 
bringing it under subjection to its influences. 

The dynasties seem to be more alive to this than 
the people, for even the more intelligent representa- 
tives of the latter do not see the entire bearing of the 
conflict, and seem unable to comprehend that the 
contending principles to reconcile which a vain 
attempt was made in Germany in 1848, have with- 
drawn to the two extremities of Europe, and there 
stand opposed to each other as two antagonists be- 
tween whom a contest is unavoidable, and will admit 
of no neutrality. But it is in vain to hope that 
Russia will accept the mediation of the German 
Courts, and allow herself to be persuaded by them to 
draw back and give in. The brother-in-law of the 
king of Prussia, the friend of the emperor of Austria, 

I 



130 

might do this, but the emperor of all the Russias 
cannot do so. The mighty politicians of Vienna 
and Berlin, who believed in the disinterestedness of 
the Czar's support, must have recovered from their 
delusion and have come to the conviction, that the 
accession of power which Russia has obtained 
through their un-German policy, will be turned 
directly against the interests of their own countries, 
and of the Western states in general, all of which 
rest upon a common foundation, and will bring out 
into strong relief the antagonism between the dynas- 
tic and the popular interests. They must have learnt 
to see not only that they have been working into the 
hands of Sclavism, but that they are incapable of 
combating it at present ; and we can only look upon 
it as an instance of the false reasoning which is so 
often employed in defence of a bad cause, when we 
hear those who, in 1848, only followed up the tradi- 
tional policy which has ever endeavoured systemati- 
cally and by all means to suppress that national 
spirit which alone gives strength, throwing the 
responsibility of the accession of power acquired 
by Russia on England, and the policy of Lord 
Palrnerston. 

The great mass of intelligent persons in Germany 
still Hatter themselves with the hope that Austria 
will have the po^er and the will to represent the 
interests of Germany in this struggle. This illusion, 
which is the manifestation of the pitiable condition 
to which Germany has been reduced by the ship- 



131 

wreck of 1849, may perhaps still bring" a series of 
misfortunes upon the country; but it is the last 
illusion which Germany will have to conquer. To 
prove that it is an illusion would be superfluous. 
The optimists would not allow themselves to be 
persuaded by arguments, and we believe that events 
are at hand which will take the onus probandi upon 
themselves. 

Those who are not under the influence of this de- 
lusion — and the number of such will rapidly increase 
— will follow the progress of events with intense 
interest ; for if the antagonism against Russia is not 
seized upon by the nation as an opportunity for 
collecting' itself and for passing* from division to new 
national unity, then the hope of such a reconciliation 
will to all eternity prove [a chimera ; and they will 
be in the right who have prophesied the dissolution 
of Germany and the strengthening- of the neighbour- 
ing- powers through means of its divided members. 
Then will the continent sink for centuries into death- 
like sleep, and the prophecy, " towards the West 
flies the world history/' will be fulfilled without 
delay. 



FINIS. 



•X 



